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Spam is e-mail that is sent out in bulk, usually to advertise products. Unlike legitimate bulk e-mail, you cannot remove yourself from a list for spam.
The most effective way of preventing yourself from being spammed is to keep your e-mail address out of the hands of spammers. Spammers collect addresses from several sources:
- "Spam harvesters" that search the web for e-mail addresses, allowing any e-mail address posted on a public website to be a target for spam.
- Unscrupulous websites that sell lists of e-mail addresses submitted by users who registered for the site.
- Malware that sends address book information to spammers. This means that if you exchange e-mail with someone who is then infected with a virus, your e-mail address can be spammed.
Carleton does provide automatic spam filtering on the server, but this is not 100% effective. As a precaution, many Carleton students, staff, and faculty use a separate e-mail address provided by a free service such as Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail, or more eccentric services such as Spamgourmet or Mailinator, for signing up for websites and exchanging mail with non-Carleton people. The advantage of these free e-mail addresses is that unlike your Carleton address, you can easily replace it when it becomes flooded by spam. Your Carleton address is unique and cannot be changed.
In addition to the filtering provided by Carleton's server, which prevents you from receiving e-mail that can be identified as known spam, there are several software tools available that can further reduce the amount of spam you receive. These are known as "client-side" spam filters. However, they can only be used on computers you own, and the SCIC cannot provide support for this software. Nonetheless, if spam is a problem for you, you may want to install one of these programs:
- Mail, the e-mail client that comes with MacOS, has built-in spam filtering.
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