China’s Best Initiatives To Deal With Spam

In China Internet users receive on an average 2.5 junk e-mails each day. Shenzhen Hesheng Zhihui Enterprise Management Consulting Company has been found to be first spammer delivering maximum unsolicited bulk e-mail. Reacting to this the Guangdong Communications Administration has punished the company by fining it 630 US dollars and asking it to shut down.

Hesheng has been hacking e-mail addresses from the Internet and sending large volumes of spam, including commercial ads. This the company has done several times without the prior consent of the receivers and without the device to unsubscribe from the messages. Thus Guangdong Communications Administration for the first time punished a company for sending unsolicited bulk e-mail.

The Chinese Ministry of Information has rated China as the second largest producer of spam in the world after the United States. Thus China is committed to combat this costly nuisance.

Until now China did not provide for any national legislation to deal with spam. But the Chinese Ministry of Information is now working on formulating them. To make best efforts to fight spam China has developed co-operation with other signatories by signing the 'London Action Plan' on 'Spam Enforcement Collaboration'. The collaboration is between U.S and U.K to counter spam at an international level.

China is considering to employ legal action to block spam e-mail. As a first step the Ministry of Information Industry enforced that e-mails carrying business ads must clearly mark them as "ads" and also provide facility to subscribe and cancel. Those caught to deliver non-commercial spam will be fined below 10,000 Yuan (about US $1,250) while sending spam having business implications or illegal profits will draw fines of a maximum of 30,000 Yuan (US $3,800).

Apart from this private parties in China are also making efforts to address the problem of spam. For instance the Internet Society of China that includes the largest ISPs in China are subject to its "standards for web-based public e-mail service". The standards elicit policies against spam and assess ISPs based on spam ratios. The society is about to start 'e-mail service administrators' in major regions in China to enhance dealing with spam.

Related article: China Finds War with Cyber-Crime a Difficult Task

» SPAMfighter News - 8/26/2006