VU Math: Intro to Our
Computer Systems
Email in our department
by Eric Schechter
Tips about Email:
Spam, Viruses, Chain Letters, Hoaxes, and Etiquette
Spam
Spam is unsolicited bulk commercial email.
A little spam is a minor annoyance; lots of spam is a big time-waster.
What should you do about spam? These are the steps
I would recommend (and in this order):
- Delete the spam message and forget about it. With luck, it won't come back.
In fact, if you do contact the sender in any way (even to ask to be removed from the
mailing list), you may actually increase the chances of getting more spam from that sender.
- If you keep getting spam from one sender, look at the email message and see if
it ends with instructions about how to get off the mailing list. If it does, follow
those instructions; they're not guarateed to work but they're worth a try.
(Caution: If the spam was sent to your old email address and then forwarded
to your new email address, sending a reply from the new email address probably
won't work.)
- If you still keep getting spam from that one sender, take a look at the
full message headers on the message. (Find where your email client program
enables you to show full headers.) Figure out where the message really came from.
For instance, suppose the original sender was "joegreedy@useourmail.com".
Look for a website at "www.useourmail.com". It probably includes a message
or link about "abuse policy", or "we don't allow any of our clients to send out spam."
Click on that link, and send a message to "abuse@useourmail.com" to
tell them that "joegreedy" has been abusing his privileges. In some cases,
"useourmail.com" will discontinue permitting "joegreedy" to use their
email services.
- If that still doesn't work (not likely), contact the administrator of
your own email service and tell them that you think they should hereafter reject
all email that comes from "useourmail.com". They might go along with that
request.
Here is a note about how to avoid receiving spam in the first place:
When you use the internet for some sort of service, invariably you're asked
for your email address. Look carefully at what little boxes are checked
or unchecked; be sure that you aren't inadvertently agreeing to
receive advertisements.
For more information on spam and what to do about it, here are some links:
(A bit of internet history trivia: "spam" is unsolicited
commercial email, but "Spam" is a canned
lunch meat made by Hormel foods.
The comedy team, Monty Python's Flying Circus,
did a
sketch
involving Vikings singing in a restaurant where all the
food items on the menu involved Spam in some fashion. The idea was that
Spam was ubiquitous and unavoidable. Based on that sketch, some internet
folks began using the term "spam" for unwanted bulk email.)
Viruses
A computer virus can do serious damage to your document files and/or
your system files; it may eventually render your computer entirely unusable.
But first it may make your computer run more slowly, while spreading copies of itself.
Viruses can spread in programs, in macros, and in email. In recent months, the
most common viruses spread through attachments to email messages.
To protect yourself against viruses,
- Install and maintain antivirus software on your own computer.
Members of the Vanderbilt community can download excellent antivirus
software for free from
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/its/antivirus/.
Other people buy antivirus software, or get some free from
AVG.
- Don't open unexpected email attachments -- even if they are on messages
that appear to be from someone you know and trust. If that person's computer
gets infected, the virus may start sending out email messages that appear to be
signed by that person. Here is one way that you can tell the difference:
- A
message that says "Attached is a program that I think you should look at" could
easily have been written by someone who doesn't know you -- e.g., by
a virus. But
- a message
that says "Attached is the finite group theory program that I mentioned to
you on the phone yesterday" certainly could not have been written by a virus.
Here are some websites where you can learn more about viruses:
McAfee
- Sarc -
F-Secure
- The Register.
Chain letters and hoaxes
An email message containing a line like "please forward a copy of
this message to everyone you
know" generally should not be forwarded. In most cases,
the main content of the message is an untruth, and propagating it will merely waste
a lot of people's time -- for instance, "Jessica Mydek is dying and needs your help"
is just not true. Some of the hoaxes actually cause damage -- for instance, not
only is it false that "sulfnbk.exe is a virus and you should delete it", but in fact
sulfnbk.exe is actually a proper part of the Windows operating system;
if you delete it, you'll need to replace it, and that's a lot of bother.
A basic rule of etiquette, on the internet or anywhere else,
is: Don't repeat any assertion that
you haven't verified. In most cases, you can determine the
truth or falsehood of a "please forward" message pretty easily, by doing
an appropriate search in any major internet search engine such as
Yahoo or Google. For instance, try searching for
"Mydek" or "sulfnbk.exe" before you forward messages on either
of those topics.
You can learn more about hoaxes at
purportal.
Assorted etiquette tips
- Do not forward chain letters.
- Don't buy anything from spammers,
even if they're selling something you want to buy. Buy it elsewhere.
Spammers waste huge amounts of time for huge numbers of
people, in order to sell a few products to a very few people.
They'll continue as long as it's profitable for them, regardless
of how unprofitable it is for the rest of us.
Let's make it unprofitable for them.
- Know the difference between "reply to sender" and "reply to all".
These have different names on different email client programs; in some
cases it's just the difference between "r" and "R". Don't send 100 people
copies of a message that you intended for one person.
- Use BCC instead of send to, for large lists of people.
Most email programs have the capability of sending "blind carbon copy",
which means that each recipient does not have to look at a long list of
recipients. (This also makes it less likely that someone will reply with
"R" instead of "r" and waste lots of time for lots of people.)
You might begin the message with "To: All members of
our organization" or something like that, so that each recipient will
know that he or she is not the only recipient.
- Accompany any attachment with a description that
probably couldn't have been
written by a virus. Write "please look at this attachment about my
article on hyperbolic infinite groups", instead of "please look at this attachment."
Some additional etiquette tips can be found at
http://www.emailreplies.com/
and
http://www.email-answers.com/.
A VU
Math web page, updated
9 Nov 2002 by
webmaster@math.vanderbilt.edu.