In addition to the usual inundation of beginning-of-the-semester e-mails, many University students and faculty must deal with the increasing number of junk e-mails -- or spam -- which crowd their inboxes.
To combat this growing problem of unwanted spam in University e-mail inboxes, University Information Technologies Communications now offers an anti-spam service. Now, anyone who uses the University's Central Mail Service can adjust their inboxes' tolerance level for spam and whether or not they will manage the redirected mail.
Links regarding the newly offered service can be found on both the University's current student Web site and the ITC homepage.
According to the Web site's instructions, students first choose to enable the service and then they set their tolerance level for spam on levels one through 10.
ITC Network Systems Manager Robin Ruggaber explained that a cluster of machines in the central mail server then will look at e-mail messages as they come into the system and compare them to a list of common signatures associated with spam. Those most likely to be spam will be rated and filtered according to the user's tolerance setting.
ITC started offering the service University-wide Dec. 2 after a three month trial they conducted last semester to test the anti-spam service's viability.
Susan Dempsey, a computer specialist for the College, was part of the group which tested the service last semester and said she enjoyed the program.
"It was easy to configure," Dempsey said. "Also, I read my mail using Mulberry and Web Mail. Since the filtering happens on the mail server it takes care of spam no matter which program I use to read my mail."
Unfortunately, some e-mails may be falsely identified as spam, but that is why central mail users also will designate how they wish to manage their filtered mail.
Cutler said he still is wary though of how much of his personal e-mails the service will filter.
"I think it's a good thing that U.Va. has this anti-spam service but I'm worried they're going to start spamming things that I don't want," he said. "I'm going to have to check the spam stuff to make sure things don't slip in there and I'll probably never remember to check it."
At least at first, ITC thus recommends setting the tolerance level to five -- a moderate setting -- in order to minimize the number of mistagged e-mails.
Dempsey said she set her tolerance level to five and only one legitimate e-mail has been misdirected.
Fourth-year Architecture student Brian Cutler said he looks forward to less spam in his inbox.
"Spam is annoying because I don't know why I'm getting these e-mails," he said. "I get three or four a day."
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