A company in the United States has tricked thousands of computer-users into opening pornographic images by using the e-mail address of University College, Cork. The college has been inundated with calls from people who have opened mail with the UCC address only to find pornographic images of women.
The UCC domain address (@UCC.ie) is being forged on to thousands of bulk e-mails every day in order to get unsuspecting recipients to read spam.
Most of the spamming is originating in networks within the US. The college has complained to internet service providers in Virginia about the pornographic material, but to no avail.
The most recent messages have the subject header "Free movie clip. This is awesome. You must see it now." When opened, the attachment contains pornographic images of women.
UCC has appealed to people who receive spam messages in the name of the college to contact the service provider responsible and make a complaint in order to discourage further spamming.
The head of computer operations at UCC, Mr Dennis O'Sullivan, said that the company responsible for the problem was a well-known spam centre in the US. "We regret that e-mails appear to have come from UCC when, in fact, they don't. It can be very traumatic for a lot of people to receive e-mail like this," he added.
UCC has received up to 1,000 complaints about the e-mails and staff recently put a warning message about the unsolicited material on the college website. It is estimated that junk mail bearing the UCC name has been sent to up to 30 million e-mail addresses throughout the world.