Bakersfield College’s e-mail system has been plagued again with spam, resulting in major e-mail providers such as Yahoo, MSN and Hotmail to blacklist e-mails from BC. This is not an issue new to BC; last semester saw a similar incident.
“What happened last semester was essentially our fault,” said BC director of Information Technology David Palinsky. “What has happened since were a couple of incidents of ‘phishing,’ in which one a student and the other, a staff member, responded to spam messages. We had another incident that involved an infected computer as well.”
Spam is defined as “unwanted e-mail usually of a commercial nature that is sent in bulk.” Phishing is defined as “the act of sending an e-mail that falsely claims to be from a legitimate organization in an attempt to obtain such information as usernames, passwords or credit card details.”
“The more often this happens,” said Bonnie Suderman, BC dean of information technology, “the longer we will be blacklisted.”
Although spam and “phishing” will always be a problem, BC is looking into several different technology options to help combat these problems better. One of those options is moving BC e-mail to a different server so as to oversee it better.
“We’re pretty good at stopping spam from coming in,” Palinsky said. “But as soon as the spam protection system identifies it, and stops it, spammers find a way to work around it . it’s just a vicious cycle and a continuous struggle.”
“It will take time,” Suderman said. “But we are looking at instituting it by the next time that students are registering for classes.”
BC has also started setting up G-mail accounts to help get information out to online students who rely greatly on receiving e-mails from their instructors.
BC is thinking of implementing a mandate for all students to get a college-based e-mail account.
“We’re trying to use other methods to contact students that the students are more likely to use,” Suderman said. “We have user groups who are using such networking sites as Myspace, Facebook and Google Groups.”
Student and staff should know that the district and college will never request personal information from you, such as your username or password.
If it was absolutely needed, the IT department has access to the information. If there are any questionable e-mails should be forwarded to Todd Coston at Information Technology at [email protected].