Spam refers to unsolicited email messages sent to recipients via the Internet. These messages may be offensive (e.g. pornographic), fraudulent (e.g. requests for money) or just a nuisance (e.g. bulk mailings advertising a particular service). Spam is not targeted at you personally. In all likelihood the sender of the spam has found your email address by trawling existing lists on the Internet or by ‘harvesting’ addresses from legitimate sources. Sometimes email addresses are simply guessed. You should not be embarrassed to receive spam – everyone else is receiving it as well.
 
Information Services implements a set of centrally applied rules to prevent such unsolicited email from being delivered to addresses at the University and to prevent our system from being used to relay such mail to other sites. The various measures in place prevent a large proportion of unsolicited email from getting through. However, if your address has made its way onto a 'spammers' list you may continue to be plagued by such email. Some messages may be extremely offensive but if you receive such email it is vital that you do not attempt to reply to them or otherwise contact the originators. The most effective action you can take is to delete these messages.

• A particulary nasty form of Spam is Phishing - this is explained in the document Dealing with Spam and how to protect against viruses (4-page PDF).
• The document Dealing with Spam and how to protect against viruses also conveys
• what spam is, how Information Services works to reduce spam and how you can deal with spam
• how Information Sevices deal with messages that may contain viruses

Note: You will require Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer to download pdf files.  This software can be downloaded from the Adobe website.