BYU students have been receiving unwanted pornographic e-mails from contributors such as "beast," "cruel" and "zoo."

Kristen Adams, 21, from Rolla, Mo., majoring in history, has received unwanted e-mails for the past year on her BYU e-mail account.

"I am amazed it is so accessible - it is there all the time," she said. "It is temptation for people in general, I was more surprised it popped up on my BYU account."

Despite the filters and blocking opinions available, unwanted messages are slithering their way into BYU students' personal accounts.

However, BYU is taking precautions to reduce the amount of unwanted e-mails coming into e-mail accounts.

"Right now we do have filters - anti-spam filters that reduced anywhere from 17,000 to 22,000 e-mail messages per day," said Russell Allred, IT Services product manager.

These anti-spam filters have been working for one month.

"There has been a huge reduction. I used to receive 10 a day, now I receive one a day," Allred said.

Allred said people or companies harvest e-mail addresses from Internet sites to use in spam.

"Post anything, and you get hit with tons of spams," said Allred.

Porn does something called "spoofing" - it looks like it comes from one Web address but it really comes from somewhere else, Allen said.

"We have received some from a @byu.edu address, it never came anywhere from campus," said Allred.

Whenever an image is sent to someone in e-mail it has a unique serial number or name.

Once the person views the picture, spammers know that the e-mail was received and spammers know what kind of browser was being used.

Spammers may even send a tracking device, so they can know the person's address and send him or her spam.

Allred said anyone looking to take a stand could sign a petition against the proliferation of pornography by visiting grassfire.net.



Copyright Brigham Young University 18 Jul 2002