Spam: Unsolicited e-mail, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups; junk e-mail.

Phishing: The act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft. The e-mail directs the user to visit a web site where they are asked to update personal information, such as passwords and credit card, social security, and bank account numbers, that the legitimate organization already has. The web site, however, is fake and set up only to steal the user’s information.

At Norwood, we do our very best to block spam and other unwanted email from student and teacher mailboxes.  The Technology Office currently uses a piece of equipment called a “Barracuda” to filter email before it gets to students and faculty.  However, it is very difficult to block every piece of spam without blocking the legitimate email.  Sometimes unwanted email gets through the filter.

We tell students they should delete any email from people you do not know and never, ever reply to them.  If they do not recognize an email address, they should delete it without even opening it.  One other helpful thing is that they can add addresses to their “Blocked Senders List.”  They can do this by right clicking on the email, selecting “Junk Mail” and then “Add Sender to Blocked Senders List.”  When in doubt, students should tell their parents, a teacher, or someone in the Technology Office. 

Spam and phishing are very difficult to control.  When we tighten the filter, we can filter out good email meant for students, teachers, and administrators.  Imagine if someone took an envelope and addressed it to your home address and sent it to you in the mail.  How would you stop them or determine if it was legitimate or junk mail? The same is often true with email. Deciphering email and catching every piece of spam is incredibly difficult.  It is important to understand that we are not downplaying the issue.  We do our very best to prevent such email.  Students should know that the spam was not sent specifically to them and was most likely sent to thousands of other email addresses.

We stress to students that it is very important to not give out their email address (or their friend’s addresses) on web sites that ask for their address.

Also, while an initial reaction might be to want to disable access to the Norwood email account, the reality is that our children need to learn how to use this communication method.  Wiith the Norwood accounts we are able to investigate problems and monitor the children more carefully. If we turned off Norwood email the children would use another free web-based email account that we would have no way to monitor or even be aware they are using.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Susan Stadnik.