The success of Kent State’s recently adopted junk mail filter program may be an indication that most people do, in fact, prefer their spam canned.

“So far it’s been really successful,” said Greg Dykes, manager of systems administration. “We’ve gotten tons and tons of e-mails thanking us for the service.”

Known unofficially on the Kent State campus as “Can the Spam,” the program collects potential junk mail and delivers it to university e-mail accounts as a single e-mail headed “Summary of junked e-mails blocked.” Users can open the e-mail and view the junk mail the filter has caught.

If an e-mail has been mistakenly labeled as spam, the user can choose to “unjunk” it and move it to his or her inbox. This will also “whitelist” the e-mail’s sender so that any future mail coming from that particular address will not be caught by the filter, said e-mail system administrator Jared Boehm.

If the user chooses not to unjunk e-mails, they will remain in the “junk box,” where they will be deleted after 21 days. E-mails in the junk box don’t count against a user’s quota, Boehm said, so that regardless of how many e-mails are in the junk box, the inbox can hold the usual volume of mail.

Dykes said only about 25 of the more than 100,000 campus e-mail users have chosen to opt out of the service since its adoption on June 1.

Possibly the toughest part about the new service has simply been getting used to it, Boehm said.

“It requires change to understand what happens to e-mail [when it goes through this process],” he said.

Boehm said there has been some confusion with people who expect e-mails in their inboxes or worry that they haven’t received important e-mails, only to find them in their junk boxes.

“Of course you’re always going to have issues when you’re rolling out things like this,” he said.

Aside from that, Boehm said the service has been met with few objections.

“We really haven’t had any complaints,” he said.

Junior English and psychology major Brittany Kundra said she appreciates the service because she disliked having to delete each individual piece of junk mail.

“I think it’s a good idea,” she said.

Boehm said anyone who wishes to opt out of the service can do so by visiting http://dept.kent.edu/canthespam.

Contact news editor Abbey Stirgwolt at [email protected].