Fight Against Spam Mail Goes Global

A total of 60 countries worldwide have decided to join together in the war against spam mail, a problem which is indiscriminatingly spreading out through cellular phones and the internet.

Information-communication experts from each of these countries discussed international legislation, technical solutions and international information exchanges regarding to spam mail at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) headquarters in Geneva, Swiss from July 7~9, and agreed to prepare strong regulations based on international cooperation within two years.

--Damages from spam mail

According to an ITU report, the social damage due to spam mail reached 25 billion dollars (29 trillion won) worldwide. The expense in developing programs to deal with viruses and spam mail are also included in this loss amount.

The countries sending the most spam mail to other countries are the following: the US, China, Korea, Canada and Brazil. China, which has hiked up in the standings to rank as the second-largest spammer in the world, is to be watched out for.

According to Shinhwa Information and Communications, 220 billion cellular phone messages, which were mostly spam mail, were sent from China last year. This is an exorbitant figure which takes up 55% of the entire world’s cellular phone messages.

As a result, mobile communications service providers in China have started an immense filtering project designed to prevent spam mail. China has started a full-scale war against spam mail, and mobilized some 30,000 control agents to block off internet spam mail.

About 90 percent of all spam mail in Japan is also being sent through cellular phones.

The damages from spam mail are becoming worse, and if they are infected by a malignant program, the computer user’s account number and password can be leaked.

--International cooperation inevitable

This meeting was arranged as a form of international cooperation, and it suggested that this was in order to effectively block off spam mail accessing sites worldwide. Some countries did not even arrange punishment law for spam mail, becoming actual “intermediate points” and hubs for the spread of spam.

Currently, the US has prepared regulation laws for spam mail and they are taking effect, while the countries of European Union (EU) are adjusting the regulation intensity based on a single bill made two years ago.

Korea has made a revised bill for promoting the use of information-communication networks and information security while holding steady the details of the intensified penalties set in December of last year, and is currently expanding its sights to cellular phones.

Cooperation between countries first started with Korea and Australia signing a memorandum of understanding (MOM) to regulate spam mail last October. Following this, the US, England and Australia signed a MOM on July 2, starting international mutual cooperation in earnest.

However, the problem is that the models for regulation are different. The EU is adopting an opt-in method, while Japan and the US are selecting an opt-out method which rejects spam after receiving mail. Korea is taking into consideration an opt-out system for internet spam mail, while choosing an opt-in system for cellular phone spam messages.

Hye-Yoon Park parkhyey@donga.com