Spam

ninty9er

Is anyone else sick and tired of the sheer amount of sh1te that staff are bombarding the "all students" address with.

I've emailed 6 staff in the last 10 days including the head of ITD to ask them to stop and one in particular responded
"If you do not want to receive information on events please take yourself off of the recipient list. This **** is for and by UL students and I will be sending a reminder of same on ******. If you do not know how to take yourself of the lists please contact ITD for help."

Only problem is that the only way for me to get off the list is to drop out...I ccd the Data Protection People on my reply and I'm hopeful that when I open up on the ****** that I won't have an email from the particular individual!!

I urge you all to join in this war on SPAM

edit: I won't tell you what I said to her in the reply to the above as it's not the nicest :D

kaimera

ninty9er wrote: »

Is anyone else sick and tired of the sheer amount of sh1te that staff are bombarding the "all students" address with.

I've emailed 6 staff in the last 10 days including the head of ITD to ask them to stop and one in particular responded
"If you do not want to receive information on events please take yourself off of the recipient list. This **** is for and by UL students and I will be sending a reminder of same on ******. If you do not know how to take yourself of the lists please contact ITD for help."

Only problem is that the only way for me to get off the list is to drop out...I ccd the Data Protection People on my reply and I'm hopeful that when I open up on the ****** that I won't have an email from the particular individual!!

I urge you all to join in this war on SPAM

edit: I won't tell you what I said to her in the reply to the above as it's not the nicest :D

lmao.

Some things nevar change and college email spam is right up there with the best of them

ixus

I never understand control freaks like you. It's not really SPAM. You're a member of the college, you get emails regarding things that are happening in the college.

The odd person renting a room or selling a car. FFS!

So what happens if some mad gun man goes around shooting people like in the US and the authorities need to inform you via email as did happen last year.

A bit extreme an example, but I'm just trying to get across it has a purpose!

kaimera

One should be allowed the option to opt out of the mailing list rather than being on it by default.

To use your school example, if there was something serious that all students needed to know about then use a seperate list.

The bull**** of mass emailing the college for a few folks is a nuisance.

cson

Fookin spam would sicken yer gee. Here I was happy days thinking that I could just delete all inbox messages in one foul swoop of my enter button. Alas no, I've to fecking delete them singly and then delete them out of deleted items! Arrrgghhh ffs!

kaimera

cson wrote: »

Fookin spam would sicken yer gee. Here I was happy days thinking that I could just delete all inbox messages in one foul swoop of my enter button. Alas no, I've to fecking delete them singly and then delete them out of deleted items! Arrrgghhh ffs!

Either use outlook or don't use firefox to look at the web based mail.

ninty9er

kaimera wrote: »

One should be allowed the option to opt out of the mailing list rather than being on it by default.

To use your school example, if there was something serious that all students needed to know about then use a seperate list.

The bull**** of mass emailing the college for a few folks is a nuisance.

Which is why reception have an explicit right to email students in emergencies or once a week re: lost property!!

Which is why the PPO may email students without contravening the ITD SPAM policy as the issues are STUDENT ones and are very rare (e.g attacks at the beginning of semester-email was sent...I have no problem with that)

What I do have a problem with is getting emails about Ballygobackwards GAA vs UL Hurling, Drama Society crap, Art Exhibitions, Suicide courses (3 times in the last fortnight from the same person and the course is in FEBRUARY)!!

We must Band together and email info/at/dataprotection/dot/ie to get our point across!

rmacm

ninty9er wrote: »

Which is why reception have an explicit right to email students in emergencies or once a week re: lost property!!

Which is why the PPO may email students without contravening the ITD SPAM policy as the issues are STUDENT ones and are very rare (e.g attacks at the beginning of semester-email was sent...I have no problem with that)

Indeed this is pretty reasonable.

ninty9er wrote: »

What I do have a problem with is getting emails about Ballygobackwards GAA vs UL Hurling, Drama Society crap, Art Exhibitions.

Some people happen to be interested in GAA, the Drama Soc and Art Exhibitions. I don't think it's your place to label them as crap, even though you may consider them as such.

ninty9er wrote: »

We must Band together and email info/at/dataprotection/dot/ie to get our point across!

I don't think the Data Protection Commissioner can do much in this case....aside from perhaps forcing UL to allow people to opt out of being on such mailing lists. Aside from that the approach of sending heated emails to people rarely gets a positive response. If you want someone to pay attention and listen to your arguments I find a logical and polite email generally goes a lot further.

Just as a suggestion perhaps someone could could approcah ITD and suggest a solution to the problem e.g. someone from the SU contact someone from CSIS and work together to come up with a proposal......as a hint Exchange can definitly allow people to join/remove themselves from distribution lists and there's also plenty of open source mailing list software out there that allows similar functionality. ITD shouldn't have much trouble implementing this if there's support for it.

Cheers
Rory

ninty9er

rmacm wrote: »

Some people happen to be interested in GAA, the Drama Soc and Art Exhibitions. I don't think it's your place to label them as crap, even though you may consider them as such.

Agreed, but I'm entitled to list the emails they send as crap; that being my opinion...as they are a scourge on my already burdened inbox. For example as part of a committee, I received/sent 23 emails in the space of 27 minutes on one conversation...and as such when I have that many "legitmate" mails coming through, I think I'm entitled not to have to sift through anything I have not requested that is not academically related...at least not more than once a week. I would consider it reasonable for Student Affairs to email me about ASSIST whilst telling me about Mass for Deceased Students and Staff, and Study Skills and anything else that may be going on in the coming week....but ONLY ONCE a week!!

rmacm wrote: »

I don't think the Data Protection Commissioner can do much in this case....aside from perhaps forcing UL to allow people to opt out of being on such mailing lists. Aside from that the approach of sending heated emails to people rarely gets a positive response. If you want someone to pay attention and listen to your arguments I find a logical and polite email generally goes a lot further.

Ask Sceptre to see some of the emails I got back and he'll clarify as to the logic and politeness I received in return for my initial "please stop SPAMming me ...Kind Regards...." emails

rmacm wrote: »

Just as a suggestion perhaps someone could could approcah ITD and suggest a solution to the problem e.g. someone from the SU contact someone from CSIS and work together to come up with a proposal......as a hint Exchange can definitly allow people to join/remove themselves from distribution lists and there's also plenty of open source mailing list software out there that allows similar functionality. ITD shouldn't have much trouble implementing this if there's support for it.

They could just allow students acces to the ones that already exist for staff?? but that would be too polite and logical as we'd be able to ignore them and get on with our lives then


"Legitimate business" was what the nice lady at Data Protection referred to and said while it is borderline SPAM, that at this stage there isn't much they could do...besides give the University a friendly reminder that email shoud be used for "Legitimate Business Purposes only"

rmacm

ninty9er wrote: »

as they are a scourge on my already burdened inbox. For example as part of a committee, I received/sent 23 emails in the space of 27 minutes on one conversation...and as such when I have that many "legitmate" mails coming through

I think the rest of us can read your posts without the need for the all caps in certain places for emphasis. You gotta love committees they generate an awful lot of crap.....23 emails in 27 minutes I struggle to send that many per week (well I lie actually I've been generating that many per day recently due to a friend not having access to MSN or Googletalk so we gotta email). As a suggestion have you tried using the built in filtering functions in Outlook e.g. you can set up a rule that will move all mail from a certain person or group of people to a certain folder once it arrives it makes managing mail a lot easier.

ninty9er wrote: »

Ask Sceptre to see some of the emails I got back and he'll clarify as to the logic and politeness I received in return for my initial "please stop SPAMming me ...Kind Regards...." emails

It's getting late I'm not sure he'd like to be disturbed at this hour of the evening. I'll ask tomorrow at some stage maybe.

ninty9er wrote: »

They could just allow students acces to the ones that already exist for staff?? but that would be too polite and logical as we'd be able to ignore them and get on with our lives then

Well why don't you suggest that to someone in ITD then? I know there are multiple staff mailing lists for stuff like events and lost property. It's pretty easy to give people the option of subscribing themselves to mailing lists in Exchange Server. Alternatively it could be suggested that a single news website is created with some type of CMS and then distribute the address of this site to the entire college. The CMS would make it very easy for non-tech people to add news to the site and anyone interested in posting up news/events etc can be given an account on it. Most of these problems have pretty simple solutions if only people would have a slight bit of vision on how to go about coming up with one.

Cheers
Rory

sceptre

rmacm wrote:

Some people happen to be interested in GAA, the Drama Soc and Art Exhibitions. I don't think it's your place to label them as crap, even though you may consider them as such.

As you're well-aware Rory the "some people want to get it" is the first refuge of the spammer when making excuses.

rmacm wrote:

I don't think the Data Protection Commissioner can do much in this case....aside from perhaps forcing UL to allow people to opt out of being on such mailing lists.

I'd see that as a satisfactory outcome. The misuse of the actual lists themselves can be dealt with under the code of conduct, which already exists. The problem could be dealt with under the current code but it might be more politically possible to deal with if an opt-in list existed.

sceptre

rmacm wrote:

It's getting late I'm not sure he'd like to be disturbed at this hour of the evening. I'll ask tomorrow at some stage maybe.

Oh I was awake - it was only 1am and I don't sleep any more (it's for the students, you know?).

I've seen some choice spam on that list that Derek gave me. I've also seen some downright rude replies to his initial polite emails.

Here's an excerpt from the mail I sent out last night, replying to Derek's query list (and Ccing it to ITD)

Seamus Ryan/sceptre, ULSU PPO, An Focal editor and general non-sleeper wrote:

The following are not adequate excuses for mass-mailing all students by individuals who shouldn't have the right to (and as I've discussed with Derek the number of individuals in my view who should have the right to is in single digits, notably main reception, Don Barry or a nominee, a nominee of Student Affairs, a nominee of the SU and ITD - that's five).

The inadequate excuses:
1. "Some students want to get the information"
2. "You can just delete it if you don't want it"
3. "You're a student here so we can send you the emails if we want"
4. "There's no other way of doing it, unsubscribe if you want" (particularly given that the only way of unsubscribing is to drop out)

And there are other bad excuses, too late for me to go through them but unless the excuse given is "you have a fiduciary relationship with us" (which covers the university as an entity including a presidential nominee and the SU), "it's completely necessary for university administration and is controlled" (which covers main reception and Student Affairs) or "it is necessary for system administration" (which covers ITD), in my view it's not an acceptable excuse. This is of course completely separate from a lecturer, tutor or class rep emailing their class, which is of course completely acceptable as long as it is to do with university or representative business.

The problem isn't with ITD despite all the excuses you're getting, it's with staff members too lazy to read the code of conduct from ITD. The solution isn't with ITD (necessarily), it's with people who forget that students have a finite limit on their email or just don't care as long as they get to push whatever event they think is important. The ultimate solution may well be an opt-in list (all staff lists except two are technically opt-out constructs but are really opt-in lists with a default setting of yes) but if that arises it will only be through rampant abuse of the list coupled with a demand from the abusers for continued albeit more limited spamming ability.

The possible solution is the removal of bulk-mailing ability from all staff but the small agreed list who will have to stand tough against the clamours for spam from others (I've told quite a number of people, internal and external that I simply won't) and proper usage of the student portal when students open their web-browsers. Whatever about the spam for internal events that are actually UL related, the occasional use of the list for companies that aren't UL and aren't student-driven is totally unacceptable.

Or people could just read the ITD code of conduct for email. Which I doubt will happen, despite best efforts from ITD.

Obviously as someone who has to deal with UL staff on a daily basis I can't and won't possibly recommend any sort of naughty guerilla email campaign Derek. That is the kind of thing that might be interpreted by the spammers as rather annoying and might get them to think about each email they send out to the big list.

I guess the solution for now or "what do I do now" is to continue with the actions taken if you have time. I'm sure there are quite a number out there who are happy to participate in raising the profile of the extensive spamming conducted by people who shouldn't (and I stand over my assertion that the number of people who should is very very small)

Seamus

I hate spam. But then again I've seen more of it than most of you (including 35,000 messages to my student account in one summer, now down to a few hundred a season through actions taken by me as well as the installation by ITD of spam-filtering software for external (but not internal) mail). And I once managed to get a number of my email addresses off some of the more determined and unchoosy spam mailing lists by taking the time out to get entire networks and large mail relays blacklisted worldwide in the late 90s (including all of eircom.net/tinet.ie for a month) - taking the time out to cause so much trouble that lists sold of email addresses with your name on it can be (or at least used to be) worth it if you're tenacious enough. These days with less energy I just automatically block anything from Korea and it works pretty well. Internal uncontrolled UL spam is just plain rude and it's time that it was controlled. And that's my personal view and my official view as a student rep. It's informally endorsed by Class reps council, if needs be I'll happily propose that it be endorsed formally as policy.

rmacm

sceptre wrote: »

As you're well-aware Rory the "some people want to get it" is the first refuge of the spammer when making excuses.

True enough I was just making the point to Derek that his labelling of other peoples interests as crap could cause offence but I do agree with your point.

sceptre wrote: »

Oh I was awake - it was only 1am and I don't sleep any more (it's for the students, you know?).

I've seen some choice spam on that list that Derek gave me. I've also seen some downright rude replies to his initial polite emails.

Who needs sleep (granted I'm not saying that when I'm sitting on the Dart wishing for another hour in bed). Damn rude people nasty nasty things.

sceptre wrote: »

ITD of spam-filtering software for external (but not internal) mail)

That poxy stuff never seemed to work very well at all.

sceptre wrote: »

(including all of eircom.net/tinet.ie for a month)

Eircom seems to have particular difficulty when it comes to configuring mail servers. Last time I checked they were still operating open relays and I wouldn't be surprised if this hadn't changed.

sceptre wrote: »

Internal uncontrolled UL spam is just plain rude and it's time that it was controlled. And that's my personal view and my official view as a student rep. It's informally endorsed by Class reps council, if needs be I'll happily propose that it be endorsed formally as policy.

I agree that it's rude and should be controlled. It may be worth looking at some of the technical solutions e.g. providing some kind of news portal and removing the ability to mass mail for most people. It should be possible to do this while retaining distribution lists for modules and entire courses etc as there currently is. I'm not all together sure of how useful the current Sharepoint stuff that's in use would be with regard to providing news portal type functionality and ITD may not be willing to go to the effort of deploying something new.

Cheers
Rory

caesar

While we are talking about spam am I allowed to send out an email to all of the students about 2 rooms for sem 2 or do I need permission. My house mate tried but for some reason he wasn't able to send it.

Anyway I dont really car about the spam I get, doesn't bother me at all tbh....it at most 10-15 emails a week.

ninty9er

caesar wrote: »

While we are talking about spam am I allowed to send out an email to all of the students about 2 rooms for sem 2 or do I need permission. My house mate tried but for some reason he wasn't able to send it.

Anyway I dont really car about the spam I get, doesn't bother me at all tbh....it at most 10-15 emails a week.

Yes that would be SPAM, there's a noticeboard here specifically for that purpose!!

Unsurprisingly, if you were to SPAM and I was to complain you, there'd be much more liklihood of the University Code of Conduct being implemented than on a staff member for the same action.

zilog_jones

Wow, it's great that someone in the SU seems to care about the spam issue (never knew you were the PPO, sceptre). I think there's a serious lack of education WRT to using mailing lists as well. I often get emails aimed at a particular college or department - completely irrelevant to me and other thousands of students - which could have easily been sent via the suitable mailing if they knew how to/looked with their eyes.

What's the policy with clubs and soc's spamming everyone? I think that is completely unacceptable. I was president of GSoc for a couple of years and it wasn't exactly rocket science making a mailing list for our members on Skynet.

ninty9er

You're gonna love this one....I have been reliably informed that a number of staff have been discussing bringing ME before Discipline for having the audacity to request them to abide by the ITD email usage regulations..

Bring it on:D:D

cooperguy

ninty9er wrote: »

You're gonna love this one....I have been reliably informed that a number of staff have been discussing bringing ME before Discipline for having the audacity to request them to abide by the ITD email usage regulations..

Bring it on:D:D

Haha keep us updated on this. If it does happen im sure Sceptre will put the full might of the SU behind you:D

klong

Yeah, get the might of the Class Reps Council behind you too on Tuesday night

(though my classmates might say I've been spamming them too.. )

440Hz

Things are all heated here since I left!!! I feel left out now
Anyone miss me?

kaimera

440Hz wrote: »

Things are all heated here since I left!!! I feel left out now
Anyone miss me?

Me me me me me me me etc etc.

Geez

cooperguy

Your epic struggle with staff/spammers has made the paper. See page 19 of this weeks paper:D Im almost inspired enough to join you in your struggle now:D

kaimera

I demand proof!

ninty9er

P. 19

I won't be the one blinking

ninty9er

ninty9er wrote: »

I won't be the one blinking

And just to prove it I've sent an email to GY and an offender from whom I received the same email 5 times today!! referring her to section 7.1 of the ITD code of conduct for use of the email system;)

cooperguy

ninty9er wrote: »

And just to prove it I've sent an email to GY and an offender from whom I received the same email 5 times today!! referring her to section 7.1 of the ITD code of conduct for use of the email system;)

You seem really unlucky with the spam, I havent recieved any today! Oh and who or what is GY?

rmacm

cooperguy wrote: »

You seem really unlucky with the spam, I havent recieved any today! Oh and who or what is GY?

GY is a who and he's the head of ITD.

Cheers
Rory

Mr. CooL ICE

Gwan ninty9er, I'm behind ya! I really cannot believe they would have the cheek to dare to raise disciplinary action against you.

One email that always pisses me off is someone (initials KK) who emails around advertising Franklin whenever they play around here. I used to work for ITD when on co-op, and I would never dare advertise my own band through the email system. And what makes it worse is that Franklin are utter rubbish - was drunk and stumbled down to Groody Bar and got roped into paying €5 to enter when all I wanted was a fresh pint, and was confronted by a 2nd rate covers band.

ninty9er

It is week 13 but I intend to sit down with Sceptre (consider this me asking you) on Friday after gettin an hour or 2 study done tomorrow and constructing a comprehensive list of requests (substitute the D word) for GY on top of which will be the opening of the message boards to students (apart from chat cos we gots Bebo and Boards) so that we can unsub...quite frankly I couldn't care less about most of the sh1te I get so at least let me unsubscribe.

All students should be withdrawn from all but The Office of the President, PPO and Security (for EMERGENCY use ONLY).

Reception can cover lost and found with a list to b subbed/unsubbed....if I lose something I'll go and chek with them in person so I can unsub from that!!

PSA Pres should have access to all PGs ONLY and no longer undergrads.

examples such as BBS.YR1 should be restricted to Office of the Dean and Class Reps ONLY.

Module codes (which is how I got today's email 5 times) should be accessable only to the lecturers lecturing them and the main TA.

bluedolphin

ninty9er wrote: »

... today's email 5 times...

I got 'today's' email three times. I was rightly p*ssed. Normally I'll just take a deep breath, delete and continue. But ffs really! Sending to 'Students of Module XXXXXX' is a bloody joke when you decide to send to pretty much all modules and therefore hit pretty much everyone more than once. Idiocy!

Sent a reply containing pretty much the same as above and CC'ed SR and GY. I'll forward to you.

This is gone beyond a joke. I'd like to see those staff members in breach of the code of conduct before Disciplinary Committee. But of course that'd never happen. :mad:

sceptre

ninty9er wrote: »

It is week 13 but I intend to sit down with Sceptre (consider this me asking you) on Friday after gettin an hour or 2 study done tomorrow and constructing a comprehensive list of requests (substitute the D word) for GY on top of which will be the opening of the message boards to students (apart from chat cos we gots Bebo and Boards) so that we can unsub...quite frankly I couldn't care less about most of the sh1te I get so at least let me unsubscribe.

This Friday's really bad for me (really bad), I can probably slot you in at some time but Monday would work much better. I'll send you an email anyway, we'll work out a time.

bluedolphin wrote: »

I got 'today's' email three times. I was rightly p*ssed. Normally I'll just take a deep breath, delete and continue. But ffs really! Sending to 'Students of Module XXXXXX' is a bloody joke when you decide to send to pretty much all modules and therefore hit pretty much everyone more than once. Idiocy!

The ability to email the entire allstudents list has been withdrawn as of today (obviously a good thing, kudos to Gordon Young if this is the first step in sorting the problem).

Today's main spam was an example of one that I was asked to send to all students a week ago and refused (especially but not exclusively on the grounds that it had already been done by a UL member of staff but also because I'm not in the business of emailing everyone more than I should or have to). What the guilty party apparently did was email every single module to get around the restriction. I'm not particularly impressed with that and I'm saying that in the most diplomatic way possible.

As it happens, the spam sent to students is also the sole topic of my most recent editorial.

(or for those who like to read the whole paper and can't be bothered to download the whole thing here, click http://www.ulsu.ie/anfocal/index.php?categoryid=157&year=1&edition=7&page=2 (click the pic on the page to pull up the full PDF of An Focal page 2)

ninty9er wrote: »

Reception can cover lost and found with a list to b subbed/unsubbed....if I lose something I'll go and chek with them in person so I can unsub from that!!

Given that most people who lose something are quite prepared (I assume) to go check somewhere to see if it's been handed in I don't see why they can't use the bulletin board you lined me to. Or keep a simple database updated. It's a better solution than giving them the ability to email everyone even though I had them down as one of the number that should be able to. Lost and found can easily be a pull list as opposed to a push (email) list, there's an incentive for those who need it to actively check it.