Mortgage and Viagra salesmen beware: Oberlin College is cracking down on spam.

Center for Information Technology recently installed a new program to filter out spam e-mails that pass through the Oberlin mail server. The decision to install a spam filter was based on several considerations, including appeals from both students and staff.

“Complaints (about spam) had been building over the last year and a half,” said John Bucher, Director of Information Technology.

The program works by analyzing several different aspects of the e-mail, including its content and origin, to determine the likelihood that it is spam. Based on this likelihood, the program will either delete the message immediately, quarantine the message without informing the intended recipient, quarantine the message and send an e-mail to the intended recipient that it has done so or leave it alone entirely.

When somebody receives an e-mail notifying them that an e-mail has been quarantined, they have the option to release and view it.

Despite having received an e-mail from CIT notifying them of the new program, many students were unaware of the filter’s existences or how it would affect them. Of those who had dealt with the spam filter, many were indifferent.

“I wasn’t getting any spam from places that I didn’t know about, so when I check out [the notification e-mail] it has the e-mails I would delete anyway. It’s not particularly useful or annoying,” said sophomore Sarah Litvin,

A few, like first-year Lauren Dennis expressed frustration with the program. She complained that e-mails sent through websites designed to connect people, like Facebook or Friendster were seen as spam and quarantined.

Convenience or inconvenience to users was only one factor in the decision to install a spam filter.

“An important thing to realize is that spam is not just an annoyance for the recipient,” Bucher said. “It also bogs down the mail server and messes up the network. Spam also spreads viruses and worms. If you can cut down on the amount of viruses and worms that are coming in attached to spam messages then you protect the overall health of your network.”

Bucher feels these concerns supersede people’s objections to the filter.

“We cannot run an open network like we did five years ago…because the malevolent affects of the network like spam and worms will bring our network down.”

Some students, like sophomore Kieran Hutchinson, were enthusiastic about the new program.

“I really like it,” she said. “It works and it gives you control over what you get and you can pay attention to it or you can not pay attention to it.”

One student raised a concern about the filter’s ability to delete e-mails without notifying them.

“I don’t know if [e-mails] are let through or not and that’s a little disconcerting,” said senior Eric Barker. “But who wants spam? It sucks.”