Protect Your Network from IT Spam

Upon opening your email server, you were prepared for the usual array of messages: the daily correspondence of corporate related politics, warning of probable technical difficulties, and a swarm of upcoming milestones and projects.  To no surprise, you also find that your inbox is crammed with unsolicited emails advertising products you have no interest in.  Perhaps it's a Phishing notification stating that your account was frozen by a financial institute that you don't even do business with.  What gives?  Your company has addressed similar spam issues before.  Shouldn't the IT staff have the ability to keep these annoying messages from reaching your inbox?

Mass spam targets your organization

Maybe they can, but the truth is that the process of reducing spam has become much more difficult than before.  This is mostly because more than 85% of all email you will receive today constitutes as spam.  Well, if you are not kept updated with your company's email administrator, you just may have missed out on important information regarding the issue and what can be done by the IT staff to handle it.  If you have been listening, it is very easy to get lost in all the technical terms that come along with spam prevention. 

The abundance of unsolicited email has also become a huge problem for IT relations in several universities.  As spammers become more advanced, many more innocent students are becoming entangled in their web of deception.  One university in particular had a fair amount of students respond to IT scams that appeared to originate from members of the school.  As a result, hundreds of students gave up their login information to malicious spammers. 

Most IT-related spam messages revolve around the Phishing technique, where bank accounts and credit card information is targeted.  On the other hand, spammers that target universities are more intent on gaining access to the universities' networks, a ploy that will enable them to spam more staff members and students. 

Spam becomes more "genuine"

Spamming in general has become a profitable business, and the scams that were once easily identified now appear more genuine.  Spammers are using legitimate online businesses, such as PayPal or eBay, to trick recipients into giving up important account information. 

While most people would never respond to messages from senders that they don't know, this is a totally different situation when the request is being made from a sender within the IT network.  If the recipient believes the email is from a friend, boss or university professor, they will be more apt to open the message and perform whatever action that is being requested. 

An example would be an email that asks you to "click here and watch this funny video" or "can you please verify this information for me?"  The sender's primary goal is the fool the recipient into clicking the link so they can flood the mailbox with more spam, or worse, infect the computer with a virus.    

To truly understand the characteristics of spam targeted at information technology, all students and members of the IT staff must become aware of all the spamming patterns and other key factors affecting the network.  By making yourself familiar with all of the existing challenges, there just may be a chance of keeping these unsolicited emails out of your inbox.