Spam: Forwarding Policy

Information Technology Division (ITD) has been dealing with the issues of spam for years now, and we have initiated many different systems and policies to deal with it, such as the PureMessage software currently in use. One such issue is the forwarding of spam from on-campus addresses to off-campus service providers. For example, Sally Student has an on-campus address of sastuden@unity.ncsu.edu which is forwarded to sally24601@yahoo.com. If a spammer sends a message to Sally's campus Unity account, we dutifuly forward it to Yahoo! for delivery.

The problem lies in the fact that Yahoo! (or any other service provider) sees NC State as the spam originator, since our servers are delivering it to the remote server. When enough of this spam is redirected, those off-campus service providers can choose (and have chosen) to block NC State University mail from being delivered to any of their users, not just forwarded addresses.

To help address this issue, ITD is implementing a strategy where mail that is forwarded off-campus is first screened for spam. Any mail marked as spam by PureMessage will not be forwarded to off-campus email addresses. This change will be implemented on Monday, April 3rd, 2006, and will only affect customers who have forwarding set up to their Unity accounts. We hope that this will help NC State University act as a more "net-friendly" institution, and will help ensure that we are allowed to continue to send mail to off-campus service providers.

For more information on PureMessage and how spam is identified on campus, please see: http://www.ncsu.edu/it/essentials/email_messaging/pure_message/