Seattle to Ditch 'Bad Words List'

A vestige of technological times past, Seattle University's "bad words list," which screens out nonuniversity E-mails containing at least one of 40 offensive words, has annoyed some students and faculty for years and will most likely disappear by the end of this year, the Spectator reports.

Perhaps most obnoxious, when the list blocks a message, it also doesn't tell anyone—the sender or the recipient—that the E-mail was never delivered, an IT official explains. The message basically disappears. "It's like a black hole."

The list was originally created years ago to serve as a spam filter, an IT official explains, but is now mostly obsolete because of new antispam software.