Spambusters, Part II

Got spam? Here’s how to report it, here’s what IU is doing to protect your E-mail account.

By Malinda Lingwall

Where to report spam

Spam that appears to come from a valid IU account: Report this to IU's Information Technology Policy Office (ITPO). ITPO will investigate the message; if it is from someone at IU, they will identify the person and work with appropriate disciplinary authorities to stop the activity.

To report a message to ITPO, follow the Knowledge Base (KB) instructions on displaying and sending headers and forward the message to it-incident@iu.edu

Nigerian bank scams or advance fee fraud schemes: These messages usually state that a reputable foreign company or individual is needed for the deposit of an overpayment on a procurement contract. In variations of this scheme, the son or daughter of a murdered official may plead for your assistance in depositing an inheritance in a U.S. bank. Report these directly to the U.S. Secret Service. To do so, follow the KB instructions on displaying and sending headers and forward the message to: 419.fcd@usss.treas.gov.

For more information on advance fee fraud, see:

http://www.secretservice.gov/alert419.shtml

Pyramid, Ponzi or multi-level marketing schemes: These are the messages that often tell you that you can make $30,000 in 30 days. All three schemes are similar in that they are based on the idea that you can receive money by investing money or getting other people to join. Report these types of messages directly to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). To report a message to the FTC, follow the KB instructions on displaying and sending headers and forward the message to uce@ftc.gov. For more information on the FTC’s recent law enforcement actions against spammers, see:

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/spam/

Mail that makes you feel personally threatened: Sometimes it's difficult to tell if a message is spam or if it's targeted directly at you. If you receive E-mail that makes you feel personally threatened, contact your local police department immediately. You can find phone numbers for all campus police departments in the KB document "For each Indiana University campus, how can I contact the university police?" at:

http://kb.indiana.edu/data/akoj.html

All other types of spam: Report spam to the original ISP. Be sure you're sending it to the proper ISP—often, the message headers will be forged so the message appears to come from somewhere other than its true origin. For more information about determining where a message came from, see the Knowledge Base document "What should I do when I get spam E-mail?" at:

http://kb.indiana.edu/data/aknx.html

For further information on reducing the amount of spam you receive, see the KB document "What can I do to avoid receiving spam E-mail?" at:

http://kb.indiana.edu/data/adbh.html

What is IU doing about the amount of spam I receive?

UITS is investigating systems that block spam and E-mail harvesting without disrupting legitimate use of IU systems. ITPO has already taken steps to protect the online IU Address Book from spammers by limiting the allowed number of search results. UITS and ITPO continue to investigate global safeguards, including developing a pilot anti-spam service to which users will be able to subscribe. (If all goes well, this service is expected to debut in 2003.) As mentioned in Part I of this story in the Oct. 25 edition of Home Pages, IU doesn't filter mail at a university-wide level because UITS wants to be sure you receive the mail you need to see.

Other ways IU helps reduce the spam

On the central Exchange E-mail system, the number of individual recipients for each E-mail message is limited to 1,000 addresses.

IU's Online Address Book is configured to allow only 50 results at one time. This means that users must enter enough information to get fewer than 50 addresses. It is fairly difficult to write a program to harvest addresses from Web-based address books, since the program has to be smart enough to interact with the search engines on each address book. For example, you cannot search the IU Address Book unless you enter at least two letters of the last name.

For more information, see the KB document "What does Indiana University do to protect users from spam and virus-infected E-mail?" at:

http://kb.indiana.edu/data/aele.html

More information

Read what IU's KB has to say about spam at:

http://kb.indiana.edu/menu/email.html#section10

Fight Spam on the Internet! has a lot of information about spam, news articles and links to other spam-fighting organizations:

http://spam.abuse.net/

Junkbusters is one of the best sites on the Web for information on spam and other privacy invasion issues:

http://www.junkbusters.com/

The SpamCon Foundation protects E-mail as a viable communication and commerce medium by supporting measures to reduce the amount of unsolicited E-mail that crosses private networks, while ensuring that valid E-mail reaches its destination:

http://www.spamcon.org/

Stop-spam.org is another site dedicated to stopping spam. It includes ways to stop spam, what ISPs to avoid (or use) and why, and an excellent primer for learning about spam:

http://www.stop-spam.org/