"Urgent Application from the Director"
"Discreet Viagra Sales"
"Adult links and more"
"A beautiful bride for you"
It is very likely that most UB students have an e-mail waiting in their inboxes with a subject line similar to those above. Due to unsolicited bulk e-mail - spam - most e-mail users find they must sift through advertisements and chain letters before reading the messages they want.
"I usually get eight to 10 e-mails a day," said Eric Breindel, a sophomore theater major. "It takes longer to check e-mail because you have to delete all the crap."
While spam has long been a common complaint among Internet users, Richard Lesniak, director of academic services at Computing and Information Technology, stated via e-mail that many students have only recently filed complaints of spam being sent to their UB IT accounts.
According to Lesniak, a lot of the spam reported by students contain vulgarity and promotes pornographic Web sites. An overall increase in the number of spam sent to students' inboxes could be due, he said, to a general increase in spam sent throughout the Internet.
"There has been a huge increase in spam during the past six months," Lesniak stated. "That means where 10 messages were received in a day, now we're getting 50 or more per mailbox."
According to Lesniak, spam affects all e-mail users, no matter what service they use.
"For example, AOL deals with over 250,000 spam complaints a day," Lesniak stated. "And AOL estimates that over 30 percent of e-mail to its users is spam."
Joseph DiDomizio, a senior media studies major, said he receives between five and seven pieces of unsolicited mail every day.
"I'm pretty sure someone is selling e-mail account or student lists," said DiDomizio.
Lesniak, however, said UB does not sell students' e-mail addresses to marketing companies.
"UB has no interest in selling e-mail addresses to advertisers," he stated. "The unfortunate fact is that all e-mail addresses are available for free to those who know where to look."
Lesniak warned students against divulging their e-mail addresses to non-trusted sites or posting their e-mail addresses to newsgroups, message boards or other public spaces. Some Web sites, known as "harvesters," search these forums for e-mail addresses, with the intention of selling them to advertising companies.
Brooke Montgomery, a senior communication major, said she only receives one or two spam e-mails a day.
"I've never gotten a lot of spam on my school e-mail address, probably because I don't usually sign up for things using it," said Montgomery.
Aryn Wiegand, a sophomore business major, said she receives three spam e-mails a day, even though she does not give her e-mail address to any of the numerous companies that ask her for it.
"You have to give your e-mail address for everything now," Wiegand said. "I try not to give out my e-mail address."
Despite the temptation to click on the "unsubscribe" link frequently contained in spam e-mails, the CIT Web site's Frequently Asked Questions section cautioned against doing so. When users click on the link and send an e-mail to the address, the user's e-mail address is confirmed as an active account.
"Clicking 'unsubscribe' doesn't work," said Fabio Albertin, a senior communication major. "It just confirms that you exist."
Lesniak stated that CIT is developing a spam filtering service for students and faculty use for their UB e-mail account, but that the new service would not be available until more testing has been completed.
A more immediate solution to the spam problem is to use an e-mail program that allows users to activate filters that remove messages with offensive words, stated Lesniak.
"Microsoft Outlook has a built-in adult-content and junk-mail set of filters that I've been using effectively for quite some time," he stated.
"I just use the filters that come with my Yahoo! mail account," Montgomery said. "They put bulk mailings into a separate folder so that it doesn't clog your mailbox."
