junk emails and how to deal with them.

[nagnag]

Hi all
my niece works in a large organisation and has been receiving junk emails constantly for some time. She is fed up because whenever she returns to work from leave she has to sift through them before she can get on with the job in hand.
She expressed concern about them to me and I told her to send a random one to me given that her manager is fully aware of the fact that this happens throughout the organisation.(they are usually chain letters etc: send this to ten people kind of thing). Anyway, this was the first time she's forwarded one instead of binning it which happened to be the day when all emails were checked!!!!!
She has to go to Human Resources on May 8th, one of 150 workers! She's upset as it was a reasonably harmless poem and is not a union member. I say she should just write a groveling apology.
Any suggestions?

[bluejonjo]

I'd just say she forwarded it to you for advice on how to remove similar messages. Its poor but it sounds like you've had no help from a shoddy IT department.

If she does work for a large organisiation the firewall and junk mail filters on the company server are clearly inadequate. Complain to the IT administrator.

However it sounds like its being sent to and fro by collegues and clients in which case it is impossible to block.

In future you could try experimenting with message rules to block any emails containing "Fwd: fwd: fwd" in the title to remove third hand or more chain emails.

As for the "day it was checked", ALL incoming and outgoing emails will be logged for all eternity so it will be easy enough to root out the main culprits and your story may not stand up. Just be prepared.

[fo3nix]

If their IT department was worth their salt they'd be using some bayesian filtering system, like SpamAssassin.

As above says, just tell her to explain the situation. Nothing can happen to her for sending one email, when all she was trying to do was rectify the situation!

[Space]

chain mails probably come from people she knows. Why doesn't she just reply and ask not to be sent those anymore?

I used to receive chain mails ... and everytime I replied by explaining how stupid it is to forward them ( 99% of chain letters are complete nonsense ). My replies got more an more unpleasent every time.... and it stopped ! ( people get fed up with being explained how stupid they are )