Although University of Wisconsin Division of Information Technology staff said they “never” sell student e-mail addresses to private companies, students are receiving an increasing amount of “spam,” or e-mail advertisements on their student accounts.
Brian Rust of Marketing Communications of DoIT said they will offer stiffer options for students’ e-mail privacy.
“We’re doing something about it soon, probably after the semester ends,” Rust said. “We are enabling users of WiscMail to set up their own spam filters, using some fairly powerful tools that allow you to determine how strictly you want to control unidentified e-mail.”
Madison Property Management sends out periodical advertisements via the Internet. MPM president Jim Stompple said e-mailing students is very effective and provides a tremendous service to the public by offering them specials on rent.
“Housing is a commodity that everyone needs, and [e-mail is] a tremendous way to see opportunities,” Stompple said.
However, Stompple also said he would rather not comment on how his company acquires e-mail addresses. He said MPM periodically sends out e-mails but does not set up a timeframe for how often it sends them. However, Stompple said MPM very seldom receives complaints about the e-mails, and that students can remove themselves from MPM’s e-mail list by replying with “remove” in the subject line.
University of Wisconsin student Elise Guthman said she receives a lot of spam on her Yahoo e-mail account and some on her UW account.
“It just pisses me off, you know,” Guthman said. “You’re excited to get that e-mail you’ve been waiting for, or for any e-mail at all, and it turns out to be a pop debugger program.”
Guthman said she receives a lot of spam about increased penis size and Viagra, and she rarely has time to remove herself from all of the lists.
“I remove myself when I have time to deal with it; when it really pisses me off I just delete it,” Guthman said. “I really hate to waste my time to deal with that kind of stuff.”
UW’s Division of Information Technology center’s website advises students to delete, filter and report any spam they receive. DoIT staff members recommend reporting spam to spamcop.net, which will alert the system administrator where the spam originated. DoIT staff members also recommended reporting the junk e-mail to the National Fraud Information Center if the e-mail looks questionable.
Wisconsin passed a statute requiring unsolicited commercial e-mail that includes sexual content or obscene material to include the words “adult content” in the subject line. Wisconsin also has a statute prohibiting harassment through e-mail, but this does not apply to most unsolicited mass e-mail advertisements.
The U.S. Legislature currently has not pursued any of the proposed legislation to stop spam. Sens. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., proposed the most recent legislation. The senators want to enact a bill that will penalize senders who do not stop sending e-mails when asked.
