Pamela Bump
Equinox Staff
A student goes on Facebook and types in her school email address in order to enter the Keene State College network.
A few moments later she begins using a strange game or shopping application. Within a short time, she might see an overflow of junk mail in her school inbox. Although this is only one way of many that cause students to receive junk mail, the KSC IT Help Desk staff noted that there are other methods of preventing and filtering junk mail as it becomes a problem on a student’s account.
Elise Morissette, the help desk manager of the KSC Information Technology Office in the Elliot Center, explained that there are ways that KSC and its students can work to filter out their “bulk” or junk emails.
“If students are having trouble with junk mail, there are filters that students can put into place on their own account. We do have instructions posted to MyKSC on the announcements listing with step-by-step instructions on how to block an address and change the filter settings. If you are getting junk mail there are things that can be done,” Morrissette said.
In order to prevent junk emails, Morrissette encouraged students to think before giving their school address out to certain websites. According to Morrissette, student emails are not accessible by outside corporations and are also not given out by the school in any way.
Morrissette said, “Only faculty and staff have access to the full student directory and the full directory is password protected.” However, websites such as Facebook may play a role in a student’s overflow of junk mail according to Morrissette. Morrissette explained that emails given to social networks such as Facebook may not be private to other sites or companies.
“Say you use your email address on Facebook and begin using an application. That application can take your email address and that is sort of what starts the junk mail rolling,” Morrissette explained.
Although the MyKSC email address is set up through the school, it is still configured similarly to any other type of email address, according to Morissette, who added that KSC has made efforts to raise the filtering on the system.
“Any email system’s going to have some filtering in place. We have our MyKSC campus filter. We can set it to low, medium or high. We have the campus filter set to medium,” noted Morrissette, who also indicated that, “Students can go in and set their own personal filter.“
Morissette also suggested other methods that students could use to reduce their amounts of junk mail. Morrissette shared, “What I often suggest to folks is that, there’s so many ways to get a free email address now have an email address that you’re okay with it getting lots of junk mail.”
Although the IT department has set filters to flag “bulk” email, some students still said that the amount of junk mail they were receiving was impractical for a school address.
Sophomore Angie Roman similarly mentioned, “It’s really annoying to say the least,” and added, “I’m surprised we get so much on there [MyKSC] because it’s through the school.”
“It’s infuriating,” KSC student Sara Voorhis said about the amount of junk mail she receives on her MyKSC account.
Voorhis added that she felt there should be more filtering to stop junk mail, “considering that it’s through an academic institution.” Voorhis explained that she ended up choosing to use her MyKSC address as her spam and junk mail address, indicating that it was the address she would most likely give out as she does not use her MyKSC often.
Sophomore Sarah Jacques added similarly that she was not interested in the junk mail or “spam” received in her mailbox. “I don’t even look at them [the emails]. They’re all just junk mail,” Jacques said.
Voorhis and Jacques said they have other email accounts, and explained that they had a similar or greater amount of junk mail on their MyKSC as they had on their alternate emails, but also thought that changing their own filters, as directed by the IT office, could be helpful.
Although junk mail was said to be bothersome by KSC students, it is not one of the major complaints at the IT Help Desk according to Morrissette, who said, “We don’t see a lot and we don’t hear about a lot We do get some inquiries on phishing attempts, which we always welcome, because if you’re ever unsure or not if an email’s legitimate, folks should definitely check in with us.”
As for one of the stronger preventative methods for junk mail, Morrissette stated, “When you sign up for a service online and you use an email address. It’s really important to be aware of how that address is going to be used. “
Pamela Bump can be contacted at
pbump@keene-equinox.com