One school of thought maintains that it comes from the computer group lab at the University of Southern California who gave it the name because it has many of the same characteristics as the lunchmeat Spam:

• Nobody wants it or ever asks for it.

• No one ever eats it; it is the first item to be pushed to the side when eating the entree.

• Sometimes it is actually tasty, like 1% of junk mail that is really useful to some people.”

Source: http://webopedia.internet.com/TERM/s/spam.html

Spam is unwanted advertising, offers or simply junk mail flowing to your e-mail account. As an organization, other threats often take the time of system administrators and technicians. Legislation, filtering, rules and straight deletion simply cannot stem the tide of unwanted mail. So the question remains... How to deal with spam? And what is the College doing to help?

How To Deal With Spam

There are several schools of thought. Rules from the spammers themselves have taught us which methods seem to work the best.

1. Do not reply to the spammer. Companies that sell send e-mail are looking for an account that is valid. If you reply, you validate the account for them. Even if your reply is to be off the list, a spammer can take you off their list and send it (or sell it) to another spamming company.
2. Set up filters or rules that monitor your own account. Usually you can set them up by filtering for the subject, the address and in some cases the key words in the e-mail. See the GroupWise Frequently Asked Questions for ways to filter spam in GroupWise.
3. Use another account for “Offers.” If you need an account for trial software, updates or as a login to a company that you’re not sure of, using a secondary, or tertiary account where junk mail can be sent to is often helpful in keeping your name from lists and spam.
   
4. Try “unsubscribing.” Even though rule number one is “Don’t reply,” some legitimate companies will not sell your name to spammer. These sources are usually ones you’ve signed up for anyway and have a trust-relationship with. Examples are Banks, stores, and businesses that you personally deal with.
   
5. Don’t forward spam e-mail or offers to others. While this seems like common sense, it happens. Often this scenario makes things even worse as the end recipient (if violating rule #1) sends off the notification from the original recipient to remove their name off the list, will end up on the list too.
   
6. Watch yourself as to not become the spammer as you “reply to all” in a mass e-mail that you’ve received. To avoid this, (as a sender to a large body of e-mail addresses) you can send the message to yourself, and Blind copy your recipients. The downside of this action is that the recipient doesn’t get the advantage of knowing to whom the message was sent.