Managing spam through mapping anti-spam software to e-mail policy: a case study of the Copperbelt University, Zambia

Abstract

The emergence of unsolicited commercial electronic mail (UCE) also known as spam in 1978 has become a big global problem. What is being experienced now is that the numbers of unsolicited commercial electronic mails are increasing each year. With increasing number of spam e-mails, organizations and nations are making efforts to evolve strategies to manage the scourge. Managing spam has not been easy. The main reasons being that spammers do not incur huge costs. Spammers spoof their e-mail addresses and in some cases they exploit weak network systems and get hold of such systems to send spam. Other contributing factors are the user’s attitude. Usually, users give out their e-mail addresses willingly to unknown people in chatrooms, on chain mails, in electronic surveys and during product/service updates. This project was therefore aimed at designing a framework for evaluating the performance of anti-spam software tools with the major aim of mapping the anti-spam software functionalities to the e-mail acceptable use policy (EAUP) in order to reduce spam on Exchange Server 2003. The framework was designed to evaluate the performance of anti-spam software tools and how to effectively manage e-mail depending on user needs and is capable of evaluating the performance of anti-spam software functionalities. The designed framework was tested through validation with users using live data and found to be effective. The results of this case study have shown a remarkable reduction in the number of spam e-mails received by e-mail users at the Copperbelt University.