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A Publication Featuring The Information Services Technology of Maine State Government
| Volume V, Issue 10 | October 2002 |
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By Sheldon Bird
Over the past few months, we at the Department of Labor (DOL) have received reports and complaints about junk mail, commonly known as SPAM. Some of this mail is just irritating – other mailings are downright offensive. What can be done?
There is just no good way to block junk e-mail. Filtering on possibly offensive keywords introduces the risk of blocking real business communication, something government cannot afford to do. Even the most sophisticated, costly programs are neither 100% effective at blocking junk, nor 100% reliable at passing good stuff. For most companies, the "best practice" regarding junk mail is to look at the From and Subject. If you're sure it's junk, delete it. Don't even open it. If you can't be sure but are unwilling to open it, see your supervisor.
You can get on a SPAM mailer's list many ways, and there is no way to remove your address. Once your address is out there "in the wild," you're apt to get SPAM. There is not much technical support can do either, short of giving you a new mail address (such as adding or removing your middle initial), but that causes a lot of other work notifying all your legitimate correspondents of the change.
Spammers rarely play by the rules and will try all sorts of tricks. Legitimate advertising e-mail is supposed to contain a means for removing yourself from the merchant's list - an address like "unsubscribe@...." or putting "unsubscribe" in the subject field of a reply - but spammers actually use this technique to validate your address so they can use it or sell it to others! Don't even bother trying to use the "unsubscribe" instructions in a piece of obvious SPAM. It just says "Yep! I'm here, alright!"
You can use the junk mail and adult content filters built into Outlook. For instance, in my Outlook 2000, clicking Tools --> Organize shows a Junk E-mail selection allowing you several choices for what Outlook should do with a message that meets a certain condition, or rule. They tell you right there that it is not 100% accurate, and I have found important messages in my junk mail folder, so be careful. I think you still need to check the subject and recipient before you delete. I ended up turning the filters off.
How to keep your address from becoming widely known to undesirables? This excellent article, http://www.scambusters.org/Scambusters41.html, can be read in about 3 minutes if you skip the advertising. It should repay the time invested over the next few months in time saved in dealing with junk mail.
This article provides helpful suggestions which can be used both at work and on a home PC. Besides avoiding exposing your e-mail address, there are good virus avoidance practices. Most importantly for you home users, make sure you have a good antivirus program and that your virus definition files are kept up to date - they are often updated weekly to include new viruses. This service usually requires a modest subscription fee, but ignoring it can cost a lot more. Consider it part of the price of admission to the Internet. Besides causing you trouble, a virus that mails itself from your home PC is not likely to make you more popular with your friends! If you haven't updated for several months, your virus software isn't very useful. DOL technical staff updates departmental PCs on a weekly basis.
If you are on a high-speed full-time connection at home, such as cable or DSL, you really should have a "firewall" such as ZoneAlarm. These products are free or inexpensive, and are quite effective at hiding your computer from unwanted attention. Additionally, a firewall will ask permission when a new program tries to access the Internet, so you'll know in most cases if you have a "Trojan Horse" virus compromising your PC. This is even more important if you use a PC at home to do state work. A virus or hacker attack could cause confidential data to be released to the Internet.
The State has a sophisticated state-of-the-art firewall between us and the Internet, so no firewall is needed at your work PC. The state mail system stops nearly all attachments that could carry viruses from passing through the e-mail. Between that, and keeping the antivirus software current, we should be well protected.
Sheldon Bird, sheldon.k.bird@state.me.us is the Technical Services Manager, Maine Dept of Labor.
