News - The University of Montana

If you’re weary of the volume of spam you get in your inbox, it might make you feel better to know how much spam ISN’T getting to your inbox.

In 2001, spam made up just five percent of the total volume of email messages worldwide.

By the end of 2007, spam accounted for more than 90 percent of all email received by large enterprises according to ProofPoint.

The onslaught of spam coming into University of Montana email systems is even more severe. One day last week—a typical weekday—1.8 million spam messages were blocked as they entered campus. Another 3,600 messages were delivered to recipients tagged as possible spam. These days, only about three percent of the messages that come to campus ever reach an end user.

“We’re tightening it up [spam blocking] as much as we can without blocking legitimate emails,” says Tom Travis, director of IT central systems. “We’re cutting it close to the boundary.”

Travis says campus email users may have experienced increased spam in their inboxes between late November and early February. Hardware problems compromised spam-blocking efforts during that period. By February, IT had restored spam and anti-virus services to full operational levels. Travis is confident that the spam blockers are now protecting email users from junk as best they can.

How does spam blocking work?

Spam blockers use a number of mechanisms to identify junk and virus-laden email. One method is rate control. Too many emails coming from one location raises a red flag. Emails with bad recipients also indicate a possible spam attack. The University also subscribes to a service that does pattern matching for spam, which includes recognition of sender addresses that have been blacklisted.

What can email users do?

Even with the best spam-blocking technology on the front line, the average email user can expect to receive hundreds of spam emails in their inbox every month.

“We educate our end users that if they get spam, right click on it and add it to your junk email list,” says Robert Logan, a systems administrator in the College of Forestry and Conservation who runs a Microsoft Exchange email service.

A right click on a message in Microsoft Outlook reveals a number of options for dealing with spam under the “Junk E-mail” menu item. If you click on “Junk E-mail Options”, you can set the level of junk email protection you want (left).

In GrizMail, which uses Outlook Web Access (OWA) as its email client, users can click on “Options” on the bottom-left of the screen and scroll down to the “Privacy and Junk E-mail Prevention” section.

Travis advises email users to be smart about what email messages they open as well.

“Email users need to develop the ability to detect suspect email,” he says. “You can look at email headers for some clues if you have suspicions.”

For more information about spam and tips for how to protect yourself, visit this Spam at The University of Montana page. You can also seek help from your desktop support person.