China’s Ministry of Information Industry (MII) is to release a set of rules meant to strengthen the country’s fight against unsolicited email — spam — a ministry spokesman says.
“The regulations haven’t been released yet, but they will be soon,” the spokesman says.
The new regulations, which take effect from March 30, require email providers to register the IP (Internet Protocol) address of their mail servers, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
In addition, the rules require that email advertisements sent in China include “AD” in the subject header to identify them as ads, it says.
The new regulations haven’t been released yet because they are still being finalised by officials, according to a source familiar with the situation.
In another measure meant to help crack down on spammers, MII says the internet society of China’s Anti-Spam Centre has established a hotline for users to report spam. Users can also file complaints about spam online at net.anti-spam.cn.
Antivirus software maker Sophos ranked China third on a list of the 12 countries that produce the most spam, saying the country accounted for 15.7% of all spam. By comparison, the top-ranked US and South Korea, which came in second, accounted for 26.4% and 19.7%, respectively, it says.
While the amount of spam sent from the US has declined recently, the volume of unsolicited email coming from South Korea and China has increased “substantially,” Sophos says.