Junk e-mail filter on UM shopping list

Users will define spam for themselves

Natalie Storey
Kaimin Reporter

Every time Averiel Wolff opens her University e-mail account there are at least three unwanted messages waiting.

Wolff, ASUM’s business manager, said the unwanted advertisements and other messages, or spam, are a nuisance. She checks her e-mail at least four times a day and receives about 10 spam daily.

“Anything that’s not work-related or school-related is a big pain,” she said.

But Wolff’s spam problem might be cured when the University of Montana purchases a spam filter to ward off unwanted messages, said Ray Ford, vice president for Information Technology.

The University of Montana has been without any sort of filter for viruses or spam since a one-month contract with MX Logic expired in September. The Information Technology Office had purchased the filtering software amid a virus outbreak in September that threatened to paralyze computers across campus. That software scanned only for viruses, but now UM is shopping around for a new contract to filter both viruses and spam.

The virus-filtering software is essential, but Ford said a spam filter would be helpful, too, because it would reduce the number of messages that come to UM e-mail addresses, making the whole system operate more efficiently.

Ford is looking for a spam filter that can be tailored to individual users, so people with UM e-mail addresses could determine themselves what is spam and what isn’t.

“Each individual user will be able to tailor it to their e-mail account, and that information is not available to guys like me,” Ford said. “If you decide you need to get ads about Viagra, you can, and that isn’t something I will know about.”

For users like Wolff, the spam filter sounds like a pretty good idea.

“It would definitely help,” she said.

Others agree with Wolff.

Professor James Sears said he used to get a lot of spam and thinks a spam filter would help many professors.

“That’s a good idea,” he said. “Filter out that spam.”

The emergency contract with MX Logic cost $5,000 for the month of September. A year-long contract would have cost UM $60,000, which Ford said was too expensive.

Ford said UM will not collect any data about the content of e-mail.

http://www.kaimin.org/test2.php?ardate=20031016&id=1986