Submitted by admin on

College of Computing community,

There have been several reports of increased spam over the past few days. Much of the content for this spam indicates that a message sent by someone in CC failed to deliver, even though that person never sent an email to that request.

After reviewing a sampling of the messages, TSO believes the increase in spam is likely the result of a Joe job or of email backscatter (see below for links to more information). The solution is non-trivial because it requires the Internet as a whole to manage their email servers better. The user can set up a filter to automatically delete the messages but then they may never see legitimate bounce or delayed email messages.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the TSO Help Desk at 404-894-7064 or helpdesk@cc.gatech.edu.

References:

Backscatter (email)

Joe job