Students' e-mail accounts are exposed to a new form of e-mail spamming, which bypasses spam filters, consuming space in the accounts.
Loren Malm, Ball State University's assistant director of security, policy, systems and assessment, said spam e-mails were reported to be circulating in university e-mail accounts as of Monday.
He said spammers are asking people for their e-mail passwords so they can access their accounts, which they will use to send spam.
Malm said the spammers access students e-mail accounts and forge a part of the message so it appears to be from Ball State.
Anonymous spam e-mails have decreased during past years because it is harder for spammers to send, he said, so they access student e-mail accounts to bypass spam filters.
Several million spam messages are blocked each day by university filters, Malm said, but spam messages from student accounts get through the filters.
Senior history major Rachel Fulton said she thinks Ball State is already spamming her because of the amount of e-mail she receives. But, she said she was glad to see the university warn students about the problem.
Junior special education major Sung Lee said spam e-mail will waste space in an already small e-mail account. He said he will need to click the delete button more.
"It's just something you have to do," he said.
Malm said fewer than a dozen spam e-mails have been reported by students.
"Any message asking for [a user's] password is a dangerous thing," he said.
Spam e-mail is used to advertise for companies without the company knowing, he said. But, this case was not an example of that because the university does not know who is sending the messages.
Ball State learned about e-mail accounts being used for spamming from a security group of which the university is a member, he said.
He said the university sent employees on Feb. 4 a message warning about the spam e-mails that were circulating. Malm said employees began reporting spam messages days later.
Ball State didn't send a warning message to students earlier because it didn't know the e-mails were directed at students and didn't want to send unnecessary messages, he said.
"We didn't want to send messages because we weren't sure it was a problem for students," he said.
The messages are not a lapse in Ball State's ability to block spam, he said, but the only way for people to defend themselves is through awareness.
If people stop responding to spam e-mails, he said, they will break the spamming chain and no personal information will be spread.
Malm said viruses had not appeared in the spam e-mails because the university puts e-mails through two virus filters. One is provided online by Microsoft and blocks about 9 million spam messages each day, and one is operated by Ball State, he said.
Read More
Three Air Jam teams take home the win
October 12, 2012Nineteen teams shimmied, shook and flipped for a sold out John R. Emens Auditorium on Thursday night during the 25th annual Air Jam.
Bill Clinton Speaks at North Central High School
October 12, 2012Former President's Speech Could Have Effect on State Senate Race
