A revised law in South Korea designed to regulate spam is proving a success, according to the results of a recent study.
An antispam task force at the Korea Information Security Agency finds that spam levels dropped among 1000 users queried three times in the period between March and July, although the volume of commercial e-mail, both wanted and unwanted, rose slightly, a researcher at the center says.
Stiffer Fines
In March, a KISA survey found an average of more than 90 percent of commercial e-mail received by users was unsolicited. A similar survey in May found the level of unsolicited e-mail had dropped to 75 percent. The July survey puts the figure at just over 70 percent.
Behind the fall in the amount of spam received by users is a strengthened antispam law, says Aaron Won-Ki Chung, a researcher at KISA's spam response center in Seoul.
"The act that regulates spam was amended in December last year," he says by e-mail. "It newly established criminal charges and raised fines to [U.S. $8585] from the previous limit" of U.S.$3434.
The revised law prohibits automatic generation of e-mail addresses, the harvesting of e-mail addresses from Web sites, and the use of technical means to get around spam blocks. It also strengthens control of illegal labeling of commercial e-mail and protection of juveniles from spam.
KISA's July survey finds the average number of commercial e-mail received, including those for which consent was given, is just over 57 messages per day during the month. Of those, 41 messages are classified as spam, with 35 judged as illegal spam and 23 as obscene spam. Those figures represent decreases from the March survey, Chung says.
Other Efforts
KISA's findings come as several nations around the world are drafting antispam legislation and debating the best way to stem the growing amount of spam filling mailboxes worldwide. The issue is a hot topic already this year in a number of countries including the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and member states of the European Union.
Debates have focused just as much on the content of legislation as whether it will be effective and lead to less spam.
Federal Trade Commission Chair Timothy J. Muris recently said he thinks legislation alone will have a limited impact and that technology must also be enlisted to fight spam.
"No one should expect any new law to make a substantial difference by itself," he told a group of business executives and government officials at an August conference, according to a transcript from his office. "Eventually, the spam problem will be reduced, if at all, through technological innovation... legislation cannot do much to solve the problem."
South Korea is not the only East Asian nation trying to stem the flow of spam.
The Internet Society of China says its members, which include Chinese government bodies, companies, and ISPs, have stopped accepting e-mail from 127 mail servers identified as sources of spam. Sixteen of those servers are in South Korea while 90 are in Taiwan, eight in China, and the remainder in other countries.
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