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Spam

 Selected technology article

The August 2007 issue of The New Yorker offers excellent background information to the general spam issue. Damn Spam - The losing war on junk e-mail is a great article to read if you are interested in learning more about the history of junk e-mail, and the failure of methods to combat it.

 Report an incident

Most spam is simply annoying. However, if you feel directly threatened or you believe a crime is being planned or committed, please contact the Campus Police at 203.432.4400.

abuse@yale.edu was created to address misuse of email and other Internet services that might have originated from the Yale University network.

On this page:

Total email: delivered and filtered spam Email and filtered spam statistics - data is measured in millions

Tips to help minimize the deluge:

• Teach your email client to recognize junk mail

  An important piece of the spam management puzzle requires you, as an email user, to take steps to minimize your spam risk. First, you should learn to use the built-in junk mail filtering system in your email client. Based on criteria you set-up, these junk mail filters are designed to 'learn' which messages you consider spam and 'teach' them to be considered junk mail.

• Configure junk mail controls:

  • Thunderbird
  • Eudora
  • Outlook
  • Apple Mail

• Keep your email address private

  If you use newsgroups, chat rooms, blogs or other public online places with any frequency, you might consider establishing a alternate account with a free service. Use your Yale account for academic related purposes and the other for blogs and chatrooms. Spam bandits troll the Internet looking for valid email addresses.

• Do not reply to or click on links or images in unsolicited email

  NEVER click on anything in an unsolicited email; just delete it. When you click on a link or image embedded in the body of the message, your email address may be confirmed as a valid address. Links and images also may contain viruses or malware. It is good practice to never respond to unsolicited email, but most spam is sent from a "spoofed" address, so if you reply directly to the email, it may be returned to you as undeliverable or go to some stranger whose email address was hijacked.

• Never buy any product or use any service that you learn about through unsolicited email

  If spam was not effective people would stop sending it. If more of us make efforts to be less gullible the spam market might fall apart. Set up filters or rules in your email client. Set the filter to mark the email as junk if the sender is not in your address book. If an email gets into the “junk” folder that shouldn’t be there you can always add that sender to your address book.

• Don't open email from unknown sources

  A simple rule of thumb is, if you don't know the person who is sending you an email, be very careful about opening it and any file attached to it. Examine the FROM: field with particular skepticism. To and From headers can be Spoofed/Forged. Should you receive a suspicious email, the best thing to do is to delete the entire message, including any attachment. Even if you do know the person sending you the email, you should exercise caution if the message is strange and unexpected, particularly if it contains unusual hyperlinks.

• Install virus protection

  Ensure you have virus protection on your computer and that the virus definitions are up-to-date. Remember to do this for all your computers, including those at home.

What is phishing and pharming?

Phishing attacks use both social engineering and technical subterfuge to steal consumers' personal identity data and financial account credentials. Social-engineering schemes use 'spoofed' emails to lead consumers to counterfeit websites designed to trick recipients into divulging financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames, passwords and social security numbers. Hijacking brand names of banks, e-retailers and credit card companies, phishers often convince recipients to respond. Technical subterfuge schemes plant crimeware onto PCs to steal credentials directly, often using Trojan keylogger spyware. Pharming crimeware misdirects users to fraudulent sites or proxy servers, typically through DNS hijacking or poisoning. Learn more about advance fee fraud schemes (phishing).

Report internal spam

If you receive spam from a Yale account, report it to abuse@yale.edu and include a copy of the email with full headers (see an example of full-headers). If you need assistance with full-headers, contact the ITS Help Desk at 432-9000 or 785-3200. Do NOT forward email from non-Yale email accounts to abuse@yale.edu.

If you feel directly threatened or you believe a crime is being planned or committed, please contact the Campus Police immediately at 203.432.4400.

If you need assistance configuring any of these systems, please contact the ITS Help Desk at 432-9000 or 785-3200, or your local support provider.