BY MARINA DUNDJERSKI
UCLA Today Staff

If you have access to an e-mail account, you’ve likely been spammed many times. Cumulatively, Americans receive more than 261 billion spams — those pesky, unsolicited, often commercial e-mails — annually, according to Jupiter Research.

What can be done? It’s a difficult question, speakers at a seminar sponsored by icompass, UCLA’s technology communications group, said March 5 at The Anderson School’s Korn Hall.

“Not everyone agrees as to what spam really is,” said Kent Wada, UCLA’s IT security and policy coordinator. That makes it tough to automatically filter spam effectively. In addition, setting a universal block at UCLA could not only be difficult because there are so many different domains and servers, but might also infringe on academic freedom and University of California policy, Wada said.

For example, icompass coordinator Jackie Reynolds said that while UCLA could try to block e-mails containing certain words like Viagra, the drug is the subject of research and is discussed in many legitimate e-mails.

“At a university, you just can’t afford to block out e-mails so cavalierly,” Wada said.

Eddie Urenda, Bruin OnLine’s help desk supervisor, said that to reduce spam, BOL recently installed SpamAssassin, a program that evaluates e-mail and places a spam ranking in the header, which the reader can use to filter out unwanted items. This method allows the individual to determine the level of filtering he or she wants. The service is currently available to anyone using BOL, but it is an opt-in service that must be initiated through one’s mail reader.

Here are some additional tips from the panel on how to keep out spam:

Protect your UCLA e-mail address. Create another e-mail account from free e-mail providers like Hotmail, Yahoo! or Netscape and use that alternate address for such activities as making purchases online or registering for Internet services. If spam to the alternate e-mail gets out of hand, shut it down and create another.

Use a filter. In addition to BOL’s SpamAssassin, many Internet service providers such as Earthlink and e-mail software programs like Outlook offer free spam filters. Rather than blocking all messages caught by the filter, IT officials recommend creating a separate inbox folder where the messages can be routed automatically — enabling the user to scan for any wanted e-mail mistakenly identified as spam.

Never respond, retaliate or unsubscribe. Doing so informs the sender that the e-mail address is valid and that messages are read.

Report it. To notify UCLA of spam or other electronic abuse involving UCLA systems (particularly Bruin OnLine e-mail addresses ending in @ucla.edu), e-mail the electronic abuse desk at: abuse@ucla.edu. If reporting spam, forward the offending e-mail complete with mail headers. For more information, see: http://www.webcouncil. ucla.edu/itpolicy/reporting-abuse.htm.