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Spam Laws Worldwide: China
Posted by Rebecca Bolin on Tuesday, February 17 @ 15:30:40 EST Spam
China, the #2 ranked spammer, has been increasing efforts to fight spam after international complaints and blocking of Chinese ISPs. Today, China filters incoming spam by blocking servers and probably also filtering email. Legislation to punish Chinese spammers and ISPs is expected this year. Interestingly, China has placed most responsibility for preventing production and consumption of spam on ISPs.

Eighty million Chinese have access to the Internet (albeit filtered). China has long been recognized as particularly bad at spamming. In 2002, Wired suggested the real problem was the insecurity of Chinese servers. Western spammers were selling lists of Chinese open mail relay vulnerabilities to exploit globally. Systems administrators were unable or even unwilling to secure the servers, and the spam continued to flow freely. Wired claimed a "great wall" was starting to separate China as its severs were being increasingly blocked worldwide. Government officials, frustrated because their own emails were blocked, demanded legislation in 2002. Since then, the blocking has only increased, including Excite. The servers blocked now include state-owned servers also. It is unclear whether the flood of Chinese spam today is from poor security or underregulation; both are probably problematic.

China sends plenty of spam, but it also receives an estimated 70 million pieces of spam a year. In November 2002, the state-run Internet Society of China (ISC) started studying spam patterns in China. Summer 2003, it published 225 spam servers, suggesting plans to deal with spam in China. In August, ISC claimed to be targeted by spam servers with DoS attacks. After this, ISC announced that it would ban e-mail routed through 127 mail servers. Most servers, 90, are in Taiwan presumably for political reasons. Ten are in China, sixteen in the US, and six in South Korea. It is important to note that this is the only publicly announced policy. There could be other filtering or rejections also imposed silently.

This year, China has started a new campaign against spam. The Chinese government now claims spam spreads pornography, gambling, and viruses, all illegal in China. This year, the government also claims spam can be "reactionary," suggesting it contains illegal speech including anti-government expression. About 90% of ISPs will be required to take new measures by this summer. Presumably, these policies will be related to routing and filtering. Though these policies are intentionally opaque, China could require content-based email filtering at the ISP level to prevent users from accessing these materials. The Ministry of Public Security promises legislation this half of 2004 to legally punish spammers and ISPs which allow spam routing. These measures will probably target abuse and security of open mail relays. After passing these measures, China will probably publicize them to pacify international frustration with Chinese inaction about spamming. To encourage unblocking of Chinese ISPs, the government could publicly target specific spam operations or servers to prove the severity of the new policies.

For other countries, see the Spam Laws Worldwide Index.

 
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