Ball State University Students Receive Spam Mails

On February 25, 2008, students at the Ball State University received a new spam mail in their accounts showing that e-mail accounts of the university students are susceptible to the new spam scam that bypasses filters while consuming a lot of account space.

Assistant Director of Security and Assessment, Ball State University, Loren Malm, said that the spam mails asked for the recipient's e-mail password, which the spammers could use to access the accounts and send more spam from them, as reported by DNOnline on February 27, 2008.

According to Malm, the spammers who accessed the e-mail accounts forged a message to appear to come from Ball State. Since the trend of sending anonymous spam mails has subsided over the recent years because the task is relatively difficult, therefore, spammers are accessing e-mail accounts of students that make escaping from spam filters easier. The university filters blocks huge numbers of spam mails every day but spam from student accounts simply bypass the filters.

According to the officials at Ball, spam mails are crafted to advertise companies and their products while the companies remain unaware. But the current case isn't one like that as the university is not sure about the sender of the messages. However, Ball State comes to know that e-mail accounts are being used to send spam from a certain security group, which has the university as one of its member.

Spammers don't intend to communicate with the recipients through their e-mail text but they hope that students will click the included link and visit a particular Website. These Websites usually download malware. spammers also use domains for quicker cycling, complicating the processes of spam filters. Modern spammers host short-lived sites that remain for a day or even for brief hours.

Similarly, in November 2007, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) survey found 8.3 Million American adults falling victims to fraud and identity theft in the year 2005.

Michael Rupured, a specialist in Consumer Economics at the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, said that it is important for students to know that there are many who consider their personal information of immense value, as reported by redandblack on February 27, 2008.

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» SPAMfighter News - 3/7/2008