Students may have been disappointed to find their OrangeMail accounts inaccessible Saturday, but nowhere near as disappointed as they could have been and were last year on numerous occasions. Computer and Media Services got OrangeMail up and running again in nine hours.

While Saturday’s problems reminded some students of computer difficulties that plagued CMS last year, this year has been relatively tranquil with a dramatic decrease in the amount of problems despite new threats that are now emerging, said Deborah Nosky, manager of IT communications and professional development for CMS.

‘Spam hit the world at a much faster pace last fall, along with viruses, and we had no spam filtering protection, no virus protection,’ Nosky said.

The causes for last fall’s OrangeMail service failures included viruses, hackers, and spam, Nosky said. The low incidence rate of computer difficulties this semester is attributable to CMS’ PC Protect CD, Nosky said, which students were required to install and run in order to connect to the Internet at the start of the semester. Also, students’ own actions have helped with the problems.

‘Our machines are better protected and we’re all a little smarter,’ Nosky said. ‘If you got an e-mail that said ‘I love you, open this attachment’ and you didn’t know the sender you wouldn’t open that anymore. So students get credit for the fact we’re in much better shape.’

This entire semester OrangeMail has only failed twice, including Saturday’s disruption.

‘At this time of year last year I was sending out a note to students saying, ‘Bring your PCs in, we know another virus has hit. Expect to have it back in five business days at best,” Nosky said. ‘Now you can drop it off in the local service centers and in most cases turn-around time is two days.’

OrangeMail is not the only arena in which CMS has improved compared to last fall. The number of Internet failures has fallen from nine last semester to only three this semester, one of which was caused by a power outage. Last year’s Internet failures were due to viruses, which the PC Protect CD now helps combat.

Aaron Pacheco, a sophomore majoring in television, radio and film, was among those disappointed by the network failures of last fall.

‘It was just frustrating because I’m of that generation that relies on the Internet,’ Pacheco said. ‘Suddenly Instant Messenger would stop working and you couldn’t get on any Web site. I couldn’t look things up for Italian, couldn’t ask for help, couldn’t make plans for the weekend.’

Pacheco is relieved with CMS’ improvement.

‘It’s reassuring because you spend all this money to get here and you expect everything to work most of the time,’ Pacheco said.

Paula Maxwell, a support analyst for CMS, believes fewer viruses being released is another reason why problems with student computers have decreased.

‘Since they have caught and prosecuted [virus writers] they haven’t stopped [viruses] but I do think it contains it more,’ Maxwell said.

Nosky, meanwhile, is reluctant to say that CMS’ performance is now satisfactory.

Viral threats may have subsided for the time being, but that does not mean that students’ computers are safe, Nosky said.

‘Students’ machines are still plagued with Spyware,’ Nosky said. ‘That is as big a problem for us as viruses were for you last year.’

What makes Spyware dangerous, Maxwell said, is that it is a hidden threat.

‘Not a lot of people understand Spyware,’ Maxwell said. ‘A lot of what this Spyware is doing is monitoring a lot of information, slowing down the computer, creating extra network traffic. It’s kind of like a slow and painful death for the person that has it as opposed to the virus that kind of wipes out a lot of people at once.’

The newest most serious threats to students’ computers at the moment, according to Maxwell, is a Spyware program known as MarketScore, a toolbar for Internet Explorer that students can download for free and is advertised to make Internet connections faster. Once downloaded, MarketScore passes all the information a person sends or receives online through their servers, including passwords and credit card numbers.

‘Potentially this is a pretty bad one,’ Maxwell said. ‘It has the potential to do a lot of identity theft.’

So far, CMS has only identified 15 student computers that have MarketScore on them. CMS plans several activities for preventing Spyware next semester, Nosky said.

‘We’re not done, that’s why I don’t really like telling the good news story,’ Nosky said. ‘I don’t want anyone to rest.’

Published on December 8, 2004 at 12:00 pm