Email Censorship and Unwanted Mail

Freedom of speech and thought form an integral part of the Mission of Murdoch University:

To extend knowledge, stimulate learning, and promote understanding, for the benefit of the community.

Accordingly, it is the policy of IT Services to avoid censorship of electronic communications to or from the University. However, due to the uncontrolled growth of unsolicited email a number of steps have been implemented to protect University members from the exposure to these messages.

Limit opportunities for spam

Spam is the widely used term for unsolicited email. The term "spam" originated with multiple Internet postings, comparing them to Hormel's canned meat, perceived by some to have little nutritional value. It has since come to mean unsolicited and junk email.

The Gartner Research Group identified four general types of spam:

1. "Pure-trash" spam which includes fraudulent schemes, random advertisements unrelated to your interests or occupation, and offensive or pornographic material.
2. Chain letters, urban legends and hoaxes such as fake computer virus alerts.
3. Commercial groups targeting you specifically because you are a potential purchaser of their product.
4. Occupational spam from colleagues such as jokes and other non-worked related emails sent to internal mailing lists.

Senders of "pure-trash" email typically collect email addresses from the Web, public email directories and open mailing lists. These address lists, sometimes containing millions of addresses, are often sold to other groups. Here are some ways to make you less susceptible to spam:

• Never add your email address to public email directories. Avoid signing up to chat programs or Internet services that require you provide an email address that may then be listed on a web page.
• Ask colleagues to not include you in their joke lists. These messages are often forwarded to others, who may use the listed addresses to send more spam.
• Never respond to unsolicited email messages that offer to remove you from a list. This only confirms that your email account is active and you will probably end up getting even more spam.
• Only supply your email address to businesses that acknowledge your address will not be revealed to other organisations.
• Boycott companies that send unsolicited email. Do not respond to them or buy from them.

More information on avoiding spam can be found at http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD//pc=PC_1965#protect

Chain letters, urban legends and hoaxes

Chain letters urban legends and hoaxes are three of the most insidious forms of spam. They come from someone you know, having been forwarded through the Internet, sometimes for many years. They usually encourage you to alert all of your friends, and often purport to originate from a trustworthy company. Although there are a number of useful sites on the Internet that allow a recipient to check whether or not these communications are hoaxes, it is far better to simply ignore them.

Sites useful in validating hoaxes, urban legends and chain letters, include http://www.snopes.com and http://www.urbanlegends.com

What IT Services is doing about spam

IT Services is using the latest anti-spam technology that claims 95 per cent effectiveness at catching spam, and less than one false positive in every one million messages. A "false positive" is a legitimate email that is identified as spam. The new approach will also include deleting spam when it comes into the University. This means about 70 per cent of email received will not have to enter the University's email system.

1. All email delivered to, or received through, the University's email systems will be scanned and categorised as spam, suspected-spam or not spam.

a. Scanning of email is conducted by an automated scanning system.

b. Email sent from a University email system to a non-University email system will not be scanned.

c. Email sent between University email systems may be scanned.

d. University email systems include the staff email servers, student email servers and other registered email servers located on the University network.

2. Email messages that fall in the category of:

a. "spam", will be deleted immediately and not delivered.

b. "suspected-spam", will be delivered and include a header tag that identifies the message as suspected spam.

c. "not spam", will be delivered.

3. The University's spam detection system will be configured to reduce the likelihood that email that is not spam will not be incorrectly categorised as "spam".
4. Records will be kept for up to four weeks of all email processed on the University's spam detection system, including email that is categorised as "spam". The records will include the sender's address (from), delivery address (to), time of receipt by Murdoch University systems and subject line.
5. A University email user who claims they have not received an email because it may have been deleted by the spam detection system will log an incident with the IT Service Desk so that it may be investigated further.
6. University email users will be notified by email and through other University publications of any changes to this policy that would alter the processing of email detected as spam or suspected spam.