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Please be reminded that the multiple-choice scanning and survey data collection service of the NCS Opscan 8/50 will cease soon. Originally the service was planned to cease by the end of Semester B 2008-09, but it is now extended to December 2009 (i.e. at the end of Semester A, 2009-10) to allow more time for our users to look for other alternatives. For queries on other alternatives, please feel free to contact the CSC Help Desk. How to Go Green: Double-sided Printing Double-sided (or 2-sided or duplex) printing should be used whenever possible. Besides the benefits of saving trees, reducing carbon in the atmosphere, and holding a handier set of hardcopies, surprisingly it can save up your print quota. With immediate effect, whenever you use duplex printing to print on a piece of paper through the Quota Controlled Fast Print Queue, your print quota will be deducted by 1.5 instead of 2. This is really a big saver! To use double-sided printing, when you print:
Using double-sided printing is a small change but can have a big impact. As going green is our common goal, act NOW to show your support! |
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Issue
37 - Sep 2003
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What is "spam"? "Spam" can be regarded as a synonym of "junk mail". It refers to unsolicited commercial email (UCE) and unsolicited bulk email (UBE). Email spam is an annoying problem faced by most of the email users on the Internet. No one wants his/her mailbox fills up with unwanted messages. However, spam spreads everywhere on the Internet nowadays, we get it almost every day and the condition is getting worse. Senders of spam are known as "spammers". They send spam to advertise products/services and recruit victims for scams. The following are some common examples of spam:
It is really an unhappy experience to find your mailbox filled up with spam. Most victims of spam will ask "how can spammers get my email address?" Spammers collect email addresses in many ways. For example, they regularly use some search engines to harvest email addresses automatically from web pages, newsgroups, bulletin boards, directory services ... on the Internet. They may generate random sequences of characters, hoping to match a few valid addresses. They can buy email addresses from other spammers. Moreover, sometimes people may be required to submit their email addresses on the Internet (e.g. before downloading some software), and these addresses may be released to unknown persons. In order to avoid spamming, you are advised to safeguard your email address. For example, you should not disclose your email address when filling questionnaires from unknown organizations.
First of all, you should never buy/use/enquire any products and services advertised in the spam. Otherwise, you will encourage more spamming and you may become one of the victims for scams (please refer to http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/alerts/doznalrt.htm for the most common scams in spam). You should not open any files attached with the spam, because these files may contain computer virus or indecent material. You should avoid clicking any links (including the "click here to unsubscribe" links) or pictures in the spam, because spammers may use these links to verify that your email address is active. You should not send replies or "remove me" messages to the spammers because this will also inform them your email address is active. Once they know your email address is active, they may send more spam to you and give your address to other spammers. Besides deleting the spam manually, you can set up client-side email filters in your email clients to file/delete the spam mail automatically (please refer to http://email.cityu.edu.hk/faq/filteremail.htm for the detailed procedure). Moreover, you can directly complain to the site administrator if you know the actual originating site of the spam. Or, you can report the case to CSC using the email address spamrpt@cityu.edu.hk.
Up to now, there is no perfect solution to completely stop all spam. The following are some of the major difficulties:
In
order to reduce spam, the Computing Services Centre (CSC) has
implemented the following mechanisms:
Besides the above, we are evaluating different hardware and software technologies on anti-spamming. We also keep on exploring more effective ways of dealing with spam including experience sharing among experts in this field and in academic institutes. |
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