Date of Notice: April 11, 2017

Current Status: Notice Given

Motion Type: Resolution

Sponsor: N. Christopher Phillips (Math)

---

Motion

Section I

1.1 WHEREAS Spam is a continuing email problem.

1.2 WHEREAS mainstream spam blocking, commercial and otherwise (including that used by University of Oregon Information Services) misses many relatively low volume spammers, such as those primarily targeting academics.

1.3 WHEREAS there are thousands of scan journals which publish almost anything if paid a high enough fee, many of which advertise themselves in spam not blocked by University of Oregon Information Services.

1.4 WHEREAS spam from scam journals sometimes fools graduate students, postdocs, and young faculty into thinking that the journal is legitimate, and fools them into damaging their career prospects into publishing in these journals,

1.5 WHEREAS the Scientific Spam DNSBL (URL: http://www.scientificspam.net; information: http://www.scientificspam.net/?page_id=6; lists: bl.scientificspam.net and rhsbl.scientificspam.net) does list many spammers targeting academics, including many scam journals, and including spammers not blocked by University of Oregon Information Services.

1.6 WHEREAS the University of Oregon Information Services does not provide technical support for individual users to use any DNS blocklist at all.

1.7 WHEREAS the University of Oregon Information Services has refused a request for such support, and refused a request to add the Scientific Spam DNSBL to the spam blocking options available to University of Oregon email users.

Section II

2.1 BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED that the University of Oregon Senate strongly urges Information Services to include spam blocking via the Scientific Spam DNSBL as a spam blocking option for its email users.

2.2 BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the University of Oregon Senate strongly urges Information Services to provide technical support for individual users wanting to use publicly available DNS blocklists of their choice via .procmail.