UNC-CH Information Technology Services

ITS upgrades listserver to reduce spam

If you subscribe to any open lists, chances are most of your spam comes from them. All of that changes on Friday.

This Friday evening, ITS will upgrade its listserver to apply the Proofpoint spam filter that already protects the ITS central e-mail system. This will drastically reduce the amount of spam received by members of open lists, which allow anyone to send a message to the list. The majority of lists at UNC-Chapel Hill are closed lists, meaning that only list members can send messages to the list address.

“We still recommend that list administrators close their lists to reduce the amount of spam sent to the list and protect the list members,” said Matt Heinze, electronic messaging services administrator. “But this upgrade should get rid of almost all spam to open lists, making them much more manageable.”

To learn more about lists at UNC-Chapel Hill, read “Listserv tips for subscribers.” If you are a list administrator and would like to close your listserv(s), visit http://help.unc.edu/?id=4007 to find out how.

ITS Messaging supports more than 13,500 e-mail listservs, as well as several other services such as e-mail and calendaring. For more information, visit http://its.unc.edu/messaging/index.php.