China Cracks Down on Spammers
Authorities want to block more than porn and pitches, while feeling pressure to stop spam sent from China.
The Chinese government is ratcheting up its efforts to fight unsolicited e-mail in a campaign with a distinctly political flavor, but officials face an uphill battle controlling spam. The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) has announced a joint campaign with the country's Ministry of Education (MOE) and Ministry of Information Industry (MII) to end spam in China. In a sign that MPS the highest levels of China's government is taking the problem seriously, the announcement was made in conjunction with the Information Office of the State Council, China's highest administrative body. Blocking More than Porn China's anti-spam campaign is aimed at more than just Internet purveyors of Viagra or low mortgage rates. Besides targeting spam with pornographic content or links to gambling sites, the MPS says the campaign is aimed at cracking down on "reactionary" spam. That ministry oversees China's police force and is believed to handle blocking of Internet access to sites deemed undesirable by government officials. The term "reactionary" is a political label that has long been used to describe individuals and content that are deemed subversive or threatening to the Chinese government. This isn't the first time Chinese officials have painted the fight against spam with a political brush. Among the more recent examples, a September 2003 statement issued by the Internet Society of China (ISC) classified some unsolicited e-mails as having "evil intentions." ISC draws members from Chinese government bodies, ISPs, and companies. The organization has led a high-profile effort to root out Chinese servers used to distribute spam and to block access to overseas and domestic servers identified as sources of spam. But politics is not the only reason--or even the most important reason--the Chinese government is going after spammers. More than half of all e-mail received by Chinese Internet users, amounting to tens of millions of messages daily, are spam, the MPS says. With so much spam flowing through the country's networks, it's necessary to address the problem in order to guarantee the normal operation of Chinese e-mail services and safeguard Internet security, the MPS says. Chinese Servers Cut Off International pressure also plays a role. In September 2003, the ISC published a list of 127 servers in China and other countries that were being used to distribute spam. The group called on Chinese ISPs and others to block access to these servers in an effort to stop the inflow of spam. The group said it was necessary to take action to restore and maintain normal network connections with ISPs in other countries, which had shut off e-mail access to Chinese servers identified as sources of spam. "The Internet Society of China wants to try our best to restore normal e-mail communications with the outside world for domestic Internet users," the ISC said in a statement. Expanding on these efforts, the MPS will require e-mail providers to adopt anti-spam technology and plans to pursue criminal investigations of spammers. MPS and others have a lot of work ahead of them if their anti-spam efforts are to show results. The rapid expansion of the Internet in China has left many Chinese servers open as spam relays, causing entire network domains--including servers run by large telecommunications operators like China Telecom and China Netcom Communications Group--to be blacklisted overseas as spam relays, according to Glyn Truscott, a consultant at market analyst BDA China in Beijing. "The network engineers are playing a game of catch-up," Truscott says, noting that many Chinese network engineers have not taken precautions to guard against their servers being used to send spam. Whether the Chinese police can help get this problem under control remains to be seen.
Reproduced from an article published by PCWorld
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