"Spam has become a scourge at the moment," said Taso Markatos, assistant dean for Information Technology (IT) at HSPH. "It is an astounding problem."

A recent check by IT indicated that upwards of 40 percent of incoming e-mails to the school was spam, said Markatos. IT recently completed testing an anti-spam product on the school’s servers intended to cut back the amount of unsolicited e-mails reaching HPSH accounts–while not deleting legitimate messages. Using the software over Memorial Day weekend, IT reported an 80 percent decrease in spam delivery.

Controlling unsolicited e-mails at HSPH has traditionally been done at the individual level. People have the option of creating filters at their desktops to direct unwanted e-mails to an electronic trash bin. Or, they can request that IT block e-mails from specific IP addresses, numbers that uniquely identify each computer connected to the Internet. Consistently blocking spammers is difficult, though, because they are moving targets. Once one IP address is identified as a source of unsolicited e-mail, for example, the spammer can simply use a slightly modified IP address to continue sending out messages.

The spam filter being used by HSPH is called GWGuardian. The company that created it updates lists of known spam messages and sources frequently. That information is then used to block unsolicited e-mail. The filter also deletes viruses in both incoming and outgoing e-mails. In one overnight test, the product screened out about 125 viruses from incoming e-mails.

To better gauge how much unsolicited e-mail reaches individuals at HSPH–and to further explore the best solution to stop the onslaught–IT will soon be conducting a web-based survey about peoples’ experiences with spam at the school. Some people receive very little spam, and others get clobbered, said Markatos.

In the mean time, he advised, HSPH members should refrain from replying to suspicious e-mails from people they do not know–and never use the "unsubscribe" option offered in some spam. This is simply a trick used by spammers to confirm they have a valid e-mail recipient on their list, he said.