Spam Floods Wright State Inboxes

Over the years email has gone from a wonderful communication tool to what some consider a nuisance, due to the unreasonable amounts of spam coming through the Wright State email network.

"It is practically impossible to avoid getting any Spam," said Mike Corcoran, lead systems programmer in CaTS. "Some Spammers run web scrapers which are programs that look for email addresses on web pages, so you may get more spam if your email address is posted on a website."

Spam is any email received that the receiver does not want, including viruses, advertisements, frauds and anything else undesired.

According to statistics from CaTS, four million email messages are processed monthly, with 72 percent of them being classified as spam by the university anti-Spam service. The amount of spam caught does not include the email that happens to get through the spam filter, nor does it count spam email let through by users not opting into the anti spam service.

Although users will still get spam even if they are careful with their email, the anti-Spam service can reduce the amount of annoying ads received. Advertisements on web pages also are a source of Spam. Just because a website says to "click here and win," it does not mean it is a safe bet. These types of ads are almost always a technique used by spammers to fool you into giving up your email address.

As the email and computer generation moves on, Spam threatens email users means of daily communication.

"I rarely check my Wright State email because I know it is going to be full of Spam," said Ibrahim Asadi, a Junior management information systems student. "I go on once in a while and delete it all."

For all Wright State accounts, CaTS offers a free anti spam service that can greatly reduce the amount of spam in your inbox. All students, faculty and staff are encouraged to visit www.wright.edu/cats/antispam or contact the CaTS helpdesk at ext. 4827 to find out more about the service and how to activate it.