System of a down

Webmail has done it again. This time a glitch in its new spam filter sent many legitimate e-mails into users' spam folders, where e-mails are promptly deleted after five days. University Information Technology Services said the problem has been fixed, but we're still rather nervous. Webmail's new warning to check the spam filter daily stands as a reminder that it's only a matter of time before the next e-disaster. All due respect to computer security researcher Sid Stamm, but the admonition to never use e-mail for important business falls in the same category as "always back up your files." It's a reasonable, well-intentioned recommendation that, unfortunately, is very distant from how most people actually work. Beyond all this though, what has us most worried is Webmail's record during the past five years.\nAfter some testing, Webmail was adopted Jan. 18, 2001, and was a major improvement over IU's old PINE e-mail system. However, by September 2002, Webmail was already having problems. Users faced long delays in accessing their accounts because of start-of-the-year glitches and the e-mail server struggling with the heavy traffic. At the same time, spam descended on the system, infecting students' computers and threatening the network's reliability. On Oct. 28, 2002, the Indiana Daily Student reported that Webmail had been inaccessible for a weekend. On Dec. 12 of that same year, the IDS reported, "Entire address books being erased, e-mails not being sent and inability to access Webmail accounts are commonplace" -- which UITS blamed on spam overwhelming the storage servers. UITS responded by writing new processing codes and installing spam filters, then replaced the old system entirely with a more user-friendly version based on open-source software. \nHowever, problems arose immediately. On July 28, 2003, the IDS again reported that the system was slowing down and denying access. Complaints about Webmail's slowness persisted. UITS responded by adding two new servers, followed by the University spending $300,000 on new spam-filtering software. UITS then adopted a host of new security precautions in response to a wave of e-mail-borne worm viruses. Oct. 12, 2004, brought the massive crash of Webmail's "Ariel" server, shutting hundreds of students out of their accounts and taking six days to fix. This was followed by the expansion of Webmail's storage memory to 100 MB and yet another version of Webmail, the current one, which was finalized in fall 2005. Again, it was purported to be more user-friendly. But by this time, many users (19 percent in the summer of 2005) were having their Webmail accounts forward messages to other e-mail services, and students interviewed by the IDS cited Webmail as too unreliable, too spam-prone and having too little storage (Google's Gmail was already offering 1 gigabyte of storage).\nWe've said it before, and we'll say it again: It's time for a change. Alternatives to Webmail are available. On Oct. 20, we wrote an editorial about Google's new education e-mail system, "Google Apps for Education." Besides working like Gmail, did we mention that it's free if you adopt it now, while it's in the beta development period?