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- Over the past several year, Boston College has seen a tremendous increase in the volume of spam/junk email received.
- According to one external study, since August 2006 there has been a 70% increase in overall spam volume across the Internet, and a 600% increase in spam using images rather than text.
- Scope of the problem at BC & beyond
What you need to know about Email Delays and Spam
- Occasionally messages sent from BC email accounts to Yahoo, Hotmail, and other commercial email service providers are delayed or rejected; this is a side effect of the widespread spam problem.
- As of April 18th we have changed the server send timeout to one hour. That means that if you are sending email to a well maintained service provider - Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, a university, etc. - you will be notified within ONE hour if we are unable to deliver your message. If you do not receive a delay or rejection notification within one hour, then your email has been successfully delivered to the addressee's email server.
- After the message gets to the addressee's email server, their service provider delivers it to the individual's Inbox. BC can guarantee we have successfully sent the message from our system; however, we cannot always validate that email has been successfully received on the other end because not all service providers are sophisticated enough to respond with an error message.
- If your email is rejected, try sending it again. Many service providers have very dynamic filtering policies. Sometimes the filtering adjustments block spammers and legitimate senders – like @bc.edu email addresses. For assistance with repeat rejections or delays, forward the email to bounce@bc.edu.
- Interested in more detail? See: Why is email I send to Yahoo, Hotmail, etc. delayed or blocked?
- Unfortunately, the issue of unsolicited bulk email is complex and there is no perfect solution.
- There are a number of factors involved that are beyond our control. It is a constantly evolving problem.
- For example, the spammers relentlessly develop new methods of sneaking past spam filter and detection products.
- This situation is not unique to BC; it has become a world-wide problem.
- Universities across the country are challenged by spam. Learn what Stanford is facing on their campus.
- Why am I getting spam?
How BC is Fighting Spam
At BC, Information Technology Services has been aggressively working to minimize the amount of spam received.