UF will be cracking down on spam e-mail and will begin allowing students to forward their university e-mail to outside accounts again in the coming weeks.
The changes are costing UF about $300,000, according to Chuck Frazier, UF's interim chief information officer.
Most of the money is going toward new spam-filtering technologies, Frazier said. UF would have to shell out another $300,000 in two to three years if it continued using the same technologies, he said.
The cost estimates don't account for staff labor, he said.
One reason UF had to stop allowing students to forward their university e-mail to outside accounts was because the amount of spam coming from UF accounts caused some e-mail providers, such as AOL, to block UF e-mail, he said.
The policy that bans forwarding to outside accounts has been in effect since fall of 2005, according to Alligator archives.
Currently, about 2 million of the 3 million or more e-mails handled by WebMail every day are spam, Frazier said.
"A relatively small percentage of all the e-mail is really legitimate e-mail," he said.
But UF's improved spam-blocking measures, combined with improvements made by outside e-mail providers, should fix past problems, he said.
UF is currently testing the new system and should know when it will be launched in about a week or two, he said.
Frazier said a big reason for allowing forwarding again is so that students can take advantage of features that UF's WebMail doesn't offer, such as large amounts of storage space.
Frazier said UF also considered replacing WebMail with another system, like Google's Gmail or MSN Hotmail, but ultimately couldn't agree on a contract with any company.
There were issues over what happens with the accounts when a student graduates and how long the e-mails are stored, among other things, he said.
At Santa Fe College, which switched to Gmail last year but still allows e-mail forwarding, the transition has gone smoothly, said Tim Nesler, associate vice president for information technology services.
There is a slight concern, however, that Gmail might start charging fees in the future, he said.
