The Service
Information Services Policies...
Unsolicited E-mails (SPAM)Please note that as this policy is periodically reviewed and updated, if you print it from the website, its accuracy cannot be guaranteed for more than a 24 hour period following printing.
Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service (HFRS) ICT Department maintain a facility to prevent e-mails being received from sources considered inappropriate and will consider requests to add the addresses of those sending spam to what is known as the spam filter. Please remember though that, inappropriate e-mail aside, what may be “junk” e-mail to you may be of genuine business interest to a colleague, perhaps in another department, and that blocking from a particular source can be applied only on an all or nothing basis. In addition you should be aware that although adding an e-mail address to the spam filter will prevent anyone else receiving mail from that particular address, people sending spam continually move on and use new e-mail addresses to avoid being blocked by organisations' spam filters - it seems to be a never ending process.
Anyone with an e-mail account is increasingly likely, from time to time, to be sent unsolicited/junk e-mail, commonly known as “spam”. It is HFRS's policy to take all reasonable steps to prevent the receipt of such mail by the users of its ICT Department but without unduly hindering normal business.
Recommended actions for dealing with different categories of spam are provided below:
Pornographic and obscene text and images, in unsolicited e-mails, have become an almost daily event for some people and can be extremely upsetting and worrying for many people. ICT Department have recently improved the e-mail `filtering process' which is now able to detect and remove many more e-mails with pornographic and obscene content than was previously possible.
If you continue to receive such e-mails you are asked to forward them to IS Service Desk and/or delete them. Although ICT Department have e-mail filtering systems in place (Through Hampshire County Council IT services), as with computer viruses, it is currently not possible to provide 100% protection against such unwanted e-mails. Forwarding, to the above address, any e-mails which have not been stopped by the filtering process will assist with preventing similar material from the same source in the future. Employee Support Line: We are aware that receiving some types of e-mail can be distressing and in these cases recommend that you consider talking to someone about your experience. You may want to speak with your line manager or contact Occupational Health, a confidential counselling and support service for all staff.
This may well relate to your area of business, whether you asked for it or not. It is not really any different from junk mail delivered via the postal services. It may not be business related at all and may even have totally inappropriate content - see above. Please note that under an EU directive, which became effective at the end of October 2003, anyone in the EU who wants to mail you advertising or marketing material on a periodic basis must have your permission to do so.
Whatever the content, if you are not interested, ignore it and delete it. If you are really concerned about the content and/or the frequency of the e-mail from the same sender is unacceptable, press the ‘Report SPAM’ button within Outlook and the sender's e-mail address will be added to the “spam filter” - see below.
Hoax virus warnings typically purport to come from an authoritative source (e.g. AOL, Microsoft, IBM) and contain warnings of the severe consequences of being infected by a recently discovered virus and encourage you to forward the warning to all of your friends and colleagues, or everyone in your address book.
Please delete hoax virus warnings and do not forward to anyone else. If you are not sure whether the warning is a hoax or not, please seek advice from your usual departmental IT support contact, or use the ‘Report SPAM’ button within Outlook. Virus warnings which are believed to be genuine should be forwarded to IS Service Desk.
E-mails promising money for assisting with the transference of money from a bank account in a foreign country fall into a category known as "advance fee fraud". Remember if you receive an offer which sounds too good to be true then it probably is too good to be true. There are a number of variations on this attempted fraud, often claiming to be from a West African source. Typically you will be promised a percentage share of millions of US dollars if you provide assistance with transferring large sums of money to the UK. The indications are that such e-mails are very much on the increase - you can find more information on the Hampshire Constabulary web site by selecting “Information and Advice” followed by “Advance Fee Fraud”.
E-mails promising you money “for nothing” are probably designed to tempt you into being parted from your own money - do not be tempted by any such offers. Responding to such e-mails is reported to have cost many people thousands of pounds - do not respond to them. You should ignore and delete such e-mails unless you first want to forward them to the ICT Department Help Desk, so that the “spam filter” can be updated (see below).
Attempts via e-mail to initiate investment related fraud are also on the increase, although there are no reports of any staff having been targeted as yet.
Please follow the advice provided for “advance fee fraud” - get rich quick schemes rarely, if ever, deliver what they promise - ignore and delete.
E-mails encouraging you to forward further e-mails to all of your friends and colleagues, often for some promised financial benefit to yourself or a named charity are simply 'electronic chain letters'. There have been examples referring to the plight of a terminally ill child, promising donations for treatment from a named organisation for every forwarded e-mail.
Please delete and ignore all chain letter type e-mails. Plain text e-mails cannot in any event be tracked, making such promises totally unrealistic. Even if e-mails could be tracked, no organisation could guarantee that it could fund such promised donations.
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