Following the "My Party" computer virus that spread throughout campus e-mail accounts last week, a new mass-mailing list filled inboxes and strained Information Technology Central Services with more than 700 complaints.

"This is our first mail storm in a while, and the worst I"ve ever seen," said ITCS User Advocate Jim Sweeton. "Getting a lot of e-mails is serious in the individual"s mind we get bogged down with complaints."

Although the original message was not a virus, its subject and body resembled the Sircam virus, which damaged computers this summer by deleting hard drive information and filling desktop recycle bins to capacity.

The user "sent this e-mail from a group he created," Sweeton said. "Hiding his uniqname, he used (the group) to send the message to hundreds of groups."

ITCS knows the identity of the person who started the mail storm, but Sweeton declined to comment further.

As a result, two groups of people responded those who didn"t know any better and asked to be removed and those who responded maliciously. For each e-mail, the hundreds of groups listed in the reply lines of the e-mail received responses, too.

"By Monday morning, it had escalated," Sweeton said. "I sent out a mail to inform people not to respond. By 3:00 Monday afternoon, anyone who (sent e-mail) would have their service suspended for 24 hours."

Six or seven people had their e-mail services suspended beginning last night. Sweeton added that although many individual"s inboxes were filled, the University mailing system could handle the barrage of e-mail.

"If 5 percent of the people complained, then several thousand people were affected," he said. "Our mail systems are pretty robust, so they weren"t affected. We have an unusual facility that anyone can create their own groups. Most of the time they are used appropriately."

Later next week Sweeton and other ITCS staff will meet to discuss solving future mail storms and to affirm a policy that will allow abusive users to be suspended more quickly.

Some students hope that measures will be taken or utilities be available to restrict and monitor e-mails.

"I probably got 50 to 60 e-mails, it was kind of annoying," said LSA freshman Gabrielle Szymansky. "I wish there were some kind of program that U-M had to restrict all those e-mails."

Other students were concerned with the ability to block and filter e-mails themselves.

"I think you should be able to block or filter what comes in," said LSA freshman Kaema Akpan. She added that students should still be able to create their own groups.

School of Art and Design senior Jeff Glogower said that the e-mails didn"t anger him he simply deleted them.

"I think I got (the e-mails) from a list or group I recently joined," he said. "I changed the e-mail on the list to a Hotmail e-mail that I have to avoid all of those messages in my mailbox."