China's Latest Export Scare: Spam

In the No. 1 junk e-mailing country in Asia, mainland business can't afford not to fight. Here's the latest on the battle to control it

Next to offshore outsourcing, spam is the other thing that has become synonymous with China.

Ranked second after the United States as the source from which spam originates, China faces an uphill battle in keeping spammers off its networks.

Danny Levinson, a representative for anti-spam organization The Spamhaus Project in China, said: "It's like influenza--we can build tools to avoid the scourge, but influenza will always remain."

Founded in 1998 in the United Kingdom, Spamhaus maintains a blacklist of junk e-mailers, works with law enforcement agencies to identify and hunt down spammers worldwide, and lobbies governments to establish effective anti-spam legislation. In May 2004, Spamhaus set up operations in China.

But as bleak as the situation may seem in the No.1 spamming nation in Asia, businesses cannot afford not to fight. The rise in other forms of spam beyond the e-mail inbox, such as instant messaging, voice over Internet Protocol, and SMS (short messaging service) spam, has resulted in loss of bandwidth capacity, loss of productivity and, ultimately, loss of money.

According to Levinson, the Chinese government and its affiliated agencies have been proactive and are working with Spamhaus to stem the spam tide, but many of the same problems persist. For example, some telecom administrators are willing to collaborate while others are not giving up lucrative spam contracts.

In a recent e-mail interview with ZDNet Asia, Levinson offers a progress report on China and questions the efforts taken by some marketing organizations.

Is there a particular type of spam that's more worrying or damaging to businesses, for example, voice over IP (VoIP) compared with traditional e-mail spam?

Any type of unsolicited bulk messaging arriving at a business is troublesome both as a loss of bandwidth capacity and a loss of time. This all equals loss of money. VoIP spam is relatively new and has not seemed to provoke as much anger from companies as traditional e-mail spam has.

Text message spam is growing but it's still a drop in the bucket compared with traditional e-mail spam. Do we necessarily need to successfully tackle e-mail first, then the other spam methods?

Unfortunately, e-mail spam will never go away. However, the tools used in helping us avoid it will always get better. It's like influenza--we can build tools to avoid the scourge, but influenza will always remain. That being said, we will never start fighting SMS spam if we only concentrate on e-mail spam, so we need to deal with them both, at the same time.

What is the state of the fight against spam in China?

Three weeks ago, Spamhaus lifted a worldwide IP block on China's Tom.com because the company was somehow wrapped up with a Chinese spammer. We are still focused on many other hotspots in China where systems administrators refuse to remove criminals from their systems. The good news is that I'm in direct contact with the Internet Society of China and China's major telecom operators, and they are very receptive to change.

On Dec. 1, 2006, China's Green Email Box initiative began with many of China's top e-mail providers like Sohu, Sina, and Netease joining to help fight spam. According to Spamhaus statistics, China ranks second behind the United States as the source of most spam.