Junk e-mail and spam remain a growing problem for the College's Computing Services department, as BlitzMail users continue to complain of unsolicited messages clogging inboxes and even uploading debilitating viruses onto network computers.
While Dartmouth's mail hub scans and excludes certain file types that commonly contain viruses as a precaution against malicious attachments, limiting e-mail messages from a seemingly infinite number of internet domains has proven to be a formidable challenge.
Computing Services is strictly limited in its ability to make blanket restrictions on potential sources of junk e-mail and viruses, as the department has committed to offering its users freedom of information online.
Ellen Young, manager of consulting services for Computing Services, explained the dilemma.
"This is an academic institution. People are researching pornography, spam, and other subjects" that may threaten Dartmouth's technology infrastructure, Young said. "There has to be a compromise between protecting ourselves and doing what we have to do as a university."
Most Internet users who complain of junk e-mail are overwhelmed by spam, a specific type of junk e-mail sent by people or companies advertising their products. Because most internet users do not choose to receive such e-mail messages, Computing Services offers a program called "SpamAssassin" that allows BlitzMail users to automatically direct most junk e-mail into a specified folder within the program rather than plaguing the user's inbox.
Adams Baker '06 works at the Computer Help Desk in Baker-Berry Library, and uses SpamAssassin. Baker described the program as "really helpful," noting that it has reduced his spam load to one piece every few weeks.
This past month's proportion of junk e-mail has been "average," according to Young. That average, however, has seen a steady increase over the past 12 months, as computer hackers are devising more complicated methods to disguise viruses, junk e-mail and spam.
One of the more recent trends among hackers has been disguising junk e-mail as official correspondence from notable software corporations or Internet service providers. Computing Services recommends that BlitzMail users select the program option to view verbose headers to ensure that the "from" domain matches the verbose mail hub reference.
Protecting Dartmouth's mail hub is an expensive burden, as efforts to maintain the computers, networks, and firewalls that keep users safe must be applied to a broad campus-wide scale. And as junk e-mail becomes more unscrupulous, efforts to protect users become more difficult.
Anika Mirick '07, for one, didn't have time to react before a junk e-mail message embedded with a virus brought her computer to a standstill for two straight days. Mirick had to reformat her computer and lost all data on her hard drive.
"I was annoyed and inconvenienced," Mirick said.
Even with virus protection and a keen eye for spam, Mirick suffered one of the worst consequences of unsolicited junk e-mail.
Computing Services recommends that users overwhelmed by junk e-mail direct complaints to the Internet providers who facilitate the junk e-mail -- discernable by the domain of the "from" address -- and trash messages from unknown or unspecified senders.
