IT Services
News - November 17, 2006

IT UPDATE: on SPAM

Statistics derived from a number of different reputable sources including: Google, Symantec, Jupiter Research, eMarketer, Gartner, MailShell, Harris Interactive, and Ferris Research indicate early in 2006, 40% of all email is spam. Annual Spam in a 1,000 employee company is 2.1 million. Later in 2006, Wesleyan University reported over 90% of the incoming mail is spam, and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee reported 85% of their 1.2 million email per day is spam.

However, Spam statistics are quickly outdated. Spam writers have the same tools that we currently have, except they use the filters to write more intelligent spam. As they out-maneuver current filters, we wait for updated spam lists to stop delivery of new spam into mail boxes. The faster we detect and block spam the faster they write code to by pass the filters. By its very nature, the war against spam is always behind the curve.

We are filtering SPAM two ways: 1) Routing internet mail (inbound and outbound) to a specific folder that Guinevere (our current spam solution) scans for spam and 2) configuring GroupWise to use a "black list." This is a free third party spam blacklist that is updated weekly by internet email community resources.

Guinevere was a $500.00 software package with an open source (free) spam plug-in, purchased five years ago. We know we have taken this technology as far as it will go and are looking into proprietary spam blocking solutions. We are currently considering one or more temporary trial solutions to see which solution works best. We will update the college with new information as it becomes available.

In the meantime, you may find it helpful to turn on junk mail handling based on personal address books. For more help on using this feature, please visit the following link: http://lanecc.edu/it/hdrefs/junk_unknown_address.pdf *(22k acrobat file)

Submitted by Denise Brinkman and Ardene Toney, IT Department.

* (Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.)