Warwick University is considering legal action as a result of spam
sent to Hotmail users that purports to come from Warwick
University. The e-mail messages contain links to porn sites and
have been traced to an ISP in the US.
Warwick University is considering legal action as a result of spam
sent to Hotmail users that purports to come from Warwick
University. The e-mail messages contain links to porn sites and
have been traced to an ISP in the US.
A spokesman said the University is angered by the spam which
looks like it comes from an e-mail account @warwick.ac.uk, the
University’s domain name. He explained that the unsolicited e-mails
are not passing through the university’s system so they are not
coming from students or staff. They traced the e-mails to an ISP
called Starnet in the US but requests to the ISP to block the
spammers went unanswered for several weeks.
News site TheRegister.co.uk reports the University as saying
that any court action would be “about the defamatory nature of the
spam – bringing the reputation of the establishment into
disrepute.”
Disguising the source of e-mail in this way is a form of
“spoofing”. Other UK universities have been the victims of spoofing
spam, apparently because recipient systems tend not to filter the
content of e-mails coming from .ac.uk domains.
