Drowning in spam? You should see what got away
Over the last hour, Concordia’s mail servers received over 19,000 emails. Less than 5,000 of those were actually delivered. The rest were junked as spam.
Complaining about spam (bulk, unsolicited, commercial email) is as ubiquitous as complaining about taxes, and possibly as futile.
IITS currently filters out an average of 76 per cent of all incoming mail before it reaches your inbox. What does get through is the tip of an enormous iceberg “and we’re improving the (spam) filters daily,” said co-postmistress and senior analyst, system software Sheila Ettinger. She added that most systems manage to filter between 60 to 80 per cent of unwanted email.
IITS uses four servers (named Bonnie, Clyde, Capone and Dillinger) to manage most of the email entering and leaving the university. Engineering and Computer Science manage their own email. Anne Bennett, who is responsible for that system, also reports a 76 per cent filtration rate.
The four gangsters (as the mail servers are nicknamed) use a variety of methods to filter unsolicited email. The filters are regularly updated, indicating which mail should be flagged, or stopped outright. Ettinger, who has been co-postmistress for less than a year, shares those duties with Tan Bui. She credits her predecessor, Sylvain Robitaille, with having greatly improved the existing system with a series of modifications and adjustments. He continues to participate in refining filtering techniques.
“It’s really difficult to just base it on what’s in the subject line,” Ettinger said. The likelihood of inadvertently rejecting legitimate mail is high. Blacklists of known spammers are consulted and fed into the system. “But spammers can keep getting another throwaway email address and send out another pile of messages.”
Spam has become an increasing problem in the last 10 years or so. As a public institution, Concordia is particularly vulnerable. Consider all of the accounts of current and former faculty, students and staff. Now think about all of the committees they have participated in, the activities they have organized, the associations they belong to, the lists they have joined and (by extension) the address books they are listed in. Spammers can access addresses through those means, and many more.
“There are often spikes, particularly when some new exploit comes out which spam and virus filters have not yet adjusted to,” Ettinger said. Incoming messages are subject to a scoring system that rates each communication on a series of variables. Messages that are flagged are monitored more closely.
Ettinger wants people to report any legitimate messages that are accidentally filtered out. But there’s no need to report spam. She monitors one unfiltered account in which everything goes through. “For every spam message you receive, I receive about 20,” she laughed.
To keep things under control, there are safer computer practices you can adopt. Email addresses that are linked to on a web page are quite vulnerable to spammers. Filling out forms on disreputable websites can also get you into trouble. But, there is little you can do if someone who has your coordinates in their address book opens an unsolicited email. On the other hand, equipping your computer with the most recent anti-virus software and appropriate firewalls or routers can help.
Individuals who want to know more about the spam measures currently in place can visit clyde.Concordia.ca/email/spam/ If you believe that less is more and are unconcerned about occasionally filtering out legitimate messages, the site also provides information on how to more aggressively filter your account. Accidentally filtered mail can be reported to postmaster@concordia.ca
For the latest info on the amount of spam filtered: clyde.concordia.ca/email/mailstats/