My university, like many others, uses a spam filtering service to weed out suspicious e-mail messages. The subject heading of incoming spam e-mail is condemned with the word “SPAM,” to enable receivers to filter these from their inbox. Overwhelmed by the volume of incoming spam e-mail, I programmed my e-mail client to send spam to the junk mailbox. After that, I forgot about it, emptying my junk mailbox regularly, without a second look. I convinced myself that if I missed mail that was that important, the sender would use another way to reach me, and if they didn’t, it couldn’t have been that important anyway. Recently, I noticed that inquires for graduate studies were lost, e-mail from a colleague about logistics for an upcoming conference suddenly stopped arriving, and a publisher complained that I’d failed to return page proofs on time. I may have lost other valuable mail, but I’ll never know for sure.

I asked my university’s IT department about our spam identification filters and was surprised to learn that e-mail accounts ending in numbers were tagged as spam as were messages written in uppercase characters. And incoming e-mail from some providers was not trusted. To their credit, the system administrators at my school were quite patient with me and altered system protocols to accommodate my concerns, but I was warned it was inevitable that some legitimate e-mail would be tagged as spam. Pursuing “spammy” e-mail further, I learned I could customize e-mail rejection with anti-spam databases such as www.us.sorbs.net1 and www.surbl.org.2 The issue comes full circle, so what is the purpose then of automatic mail classification and spam filtering tools when it seems spam isn’t spam until the recipient decides it is?

Should e-mail be monitored at all? Is my university e-mail correspondence private or does it belong to my institution? How would you feel if your university’s post office opened your mail and classified it for you? On the other hand, do we want to spend valuable time each day eliminating spam from our inboxes?

E-mail has almost entirely replaced regular mail in almost all aspects of academic activities. Inquires about undergraduate and graduate studies are sent by e-mail. Students submit assignments and ask questions electronically, using either university or private e-mail accounts. Manuscripts are submitted, reviewed and processed via e-mail. Conferences call for papers, and registration and accommodations are handled by e-mail. Travel is now via electronic tickets issued by e-mail. Renewal notices for memberships in learned societies are also e-mailed. I can think of many others. In fact, I hardly ever receive “snail” mail anymore, except for journals and professional magazines. As for faxes, I can’t recall the last time I received one.

With the dominance of e-mail in our academic life, losing even one message can have a significant impact. E-mail is a lot like triage at the hospital, but too many people think e-mail is real-time conversation and expect a reply back in minutes. And, people trust the system and expect their messages will be received. Increasingly, electronic communications are supplanting and obliterating all other forms. It is then discomforting to think Big Brother is inspecting, although electronically, all our incoming correspondence. Don’t ask me, “What am I afraid of?” or “What do I have to hide?” But you can ask me, “Am I willing to put up with all the junk mail?”

I am willing to, and do, accept some degree of filtering and classification of e-mail. However, I’d like to know on what basis this is done. In other words, I feel we have the right to know what our institution’s spam filtering rules are. I would also expect a spam filtering policy would be established in consultation with stakeholders — academic staff associations in our case. We can then function in an open academic society, which inevitably accepts some restrictions on absolute freedom for the common good. Some will argue that defining a spam filtering policy and making it public defeats the purpose of
filtering, as spammers could then circumvent the filters, but there are ways around this. Indeed, some institutions already have such policies in the public domain.3

Perhaps CAUT could develop a policy statement on this issue that can be used as a model in our institutions. Until then, make sure you inspect the contents of your junk mailbox, or the mailbox your spam mail is transferred to, before you delete the messages in it — you may find some valuable mail there. You might also ask your institution to explain its spam filtering process and policies. You have a right to know! n

Esam Hussein is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of New Brunswick.

1. Spam and Open-Relay Blocking System

2. Spam URI Realtime Blocklists

3. See for example the University of Glasgow’s spam policy.

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily CAUT.

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