Just like telemarketing calls clog phone lines and junk mail fills mailboxes, unsolicited mass e-mails are showing up in ISU students’ e-mail accounts.

One of the reasons for this is Iowa State’s selling students’ e-mail addresses to advertisers upon request.

“The university does release and sell e-mail addresses and other public information when asked,” said Judy Minnick, assistant registrar.

Mike Bowman, assistant director of the Computation Center, said e-mail addresses fall under the category of public information, just like phone numbers and street addresses.

Minnick said Iowa State’s 1999-2001 catalog states that students’ public information is sold to advertisers or anyone else upon request.

Several types of public information are listed in the catalog, including street and e-mail addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and enrollment status.

The catalog states that “public information will be released by the Registrar to anyone upon inquiry.”

Minnick said the money the Registrar’s Office received from selling information to advertisers goes toward “the cost of producing the information.”

However, students can request not to have the information released, Minnick said.

“The university only sells lists and labels containing names of students who have not asked for their information to be suppressed,” she said. “If students do not want that information released for whatever reason, they do have the right to request that.”

Students not wanting any particular piece of public information about themselves released to the public can fill out a form at the Registrar’s Office in Room 214 of Alumni Hall. In addition to removing the information from the lists sold to advertisers, the request process will remove it from the university’s print and online phone directories.

Bowman said students can request that only their e-mail addresses be removed from the directories, but making that request may not be the end of the junk e-mail problem.

“The advertisers can search newsgroups where you’ve left postings and find your e-mail that way,” he said.

Bowman also said some sites on the World Wide Web are designed to read and retain the e-mail addresses of the users accessing them in small files called “cookies.” Advertisers then use those lists to send unsolicited ads to the people who have accessed the site.

“In general, there is no way to avoid getting e-mail from advertisers who use those methods,” he said. “Electronic means is just one of the methods used by advertisers today.”

Bowman noted that in Iowa, merchants who send unsolicited ads through e-mail are required to give people who receive the ads a way of being removed from the merchants’ lists.

Bowman also said he empathizes with anybody who has received unwanted e-mail.

“It’s a touchy thing for us all,” he said. “It’s something none of us want.”