It appears in the subject line on a daily basis.

“Don’t Miss This Offer!!”

“Free $$$$$”

“XXX Adults Only”

The e-mail messages – commonly referred to as “spam” – attached to these titles frequently feature links to porn sites and “get rich quick” offers. Often, they can run rampant when an e-mail user’s address is spread to mailing lists.

But beginning Tuesday, Academic Information Technologies is implementing a system that will attempt to rid – or at least significantly reduce – Iowa State’s Webmail accounts of this common annoyance.

PerlMX is the spam-tagging product Iowa State has purchased to do the dirty work. It’s a widely used system that looks for certain words and phrases used in spam messages, then weeds out unwanted messages.

“The program uses a set of codes to determine whether or not a message is spam,” said Frank Poduska, system analyst for AIT. “If it meets enough of the criteria, the subject line will read ‘spam’ to warn the recipient. Following will be a certain number ‘#’ signs, and then more of those the more likely the message is spam.”

Poduska said approximately 40 to 60 percent of all e-mail currently circulating is spam, but exact numbers are impossible to determine. “One person’s spam is another’s important message, so it is impossible to just completely block out certain e-mails to everyone,” Poduska said. “So we don’t actually prevent the mail from getting there. We are just hoping to have a high number flagged as spam.”

The system is still being developed and improved, but will take effect as of Tuesday. “We are still working on the Webmail filters, hoping to make it as easy on everyone as possible to figure the program out – but it is still a work in progress,” Poduska said.

Rachel Hager, junior in electrical engineering, is just one student who sees the benefits of the filtering program.

“Every time I go to check my e-mail, it is at least half a bunch of junk,” Hager said. “It takes too much time to go through each message to actually find out what is really important and what isn’t, so I have actually ended up deleting important things before.”

Hager said she is looking forward to the program’s implementation. “I am so glad the school is finally doing something about this. I honestly have too many other things to do to worry about worthless messages,” she said.

Although PerlMX should be a significant improvement within Webmail, Poduska said it is by no means a total solution.

“It is going to be a never-ending battle,” he said. “Once the spammers catch on, they will change their tactics and the junk mail will continue. All we can hope is that [PerlMX] just improves the situation for a while,” he said.