Re: SPAM is a two-edged sword

["Bruhn, Mark S." <mbruhn () INDIANA EDU>]

A new IUB policy requires a department considering such a mailing to
seek the approval of the campus Chancellor.  And, we have been able to,
I think, convince her and our Office of Communications and Marketing
that such mailings are bad for Indiana University, and that the
resulting bad PR would outweigh any actual benefit realized by the
department. 
M.
 

-- 
Mark S. Bruhn, CISSP 

Chief IT Security and Policy Officer 
Interim Director, Research and Educational Networking Information
Sharing and Analysis Center (ren-isac () iu edu) 

Office of the Vice President for Information Technology and CIO 
Indiana University 
812-855-0326 

Incidents involving IU IT resources: it-incident () iu edu 
Complaints/kudos about OVPIT/UITS services: itombuds () iu edu 


-----Original Message-----
From: Lance Jordan [mailto:lancejor () RCI RUTGERS EDU] 
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 4:09 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: [SECURITY] SPAM is a two-edged sword


Greetings to all from NJ.  (Summer weather has finally reached the
Garden State and I left my shorts and flip flops at home.)   :-) 

The dilemma of dealing with SPAM.  Has anyone come across this
situation?  If so, how did you handle it?

The issue:  We have a department within the university that is a
self-supporting organization with the mission to provide management
instruction and outreach to the state.  The department wants to market
its services via email to a larger audience than just alumni or former
students of their programs.  They intend to purchase email lists from 3d
party vendors.  (Meaning they will be sending email to persons with no
affiliation with the university) 

The university already has an anti-SPAM policy.  Basically, sending the
same email message to more than 50 addresses is considered a violation,
unless sent via a mechanism like "listserv" where the users can control
their participation. 

One the one hand this department needs to be competitive and they do
provide a valuable service to the local community and state.  On the
other hand we view SPAM as an unethical practice and with enough
complaints the university can be "blacklisted." 

Thanks in advance.  Your feedback is appreciated.


-- 


Lance D. Jordan

Director, Information Protection & Security

Rutgers University Computing Services

(Voice) 732-445-8138           (Fax) 732-445-8023

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