China registers unprecedented success in Internet spam crackdown

BEIJING, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) --- China witnessed an unprecedented success in tackling Internet spam last year, according to a report released by the Internet Society of China (ISC) here on Wednesday.

"The number of junk mails from China to other countries fell to4.9 percent of the world's total in the third quarter of 2007, 8.5percentage points lower than the same period of 2006," Zeng Mingfa, director of the anti-spam center of ISC, told Xinhua on Thursday, quoting a survey conducted by Sophos, a British Internet security company.

The decline, the world's largest, helped lower China's rank in the world spam producers' list from second to third, the first two being the United States, which produces 28.4 percent of the world's spam, and the Republic of Korea with 5.2 percent, said Zeng.

Latest official figures from ISC show altogether 69.4 billion junk mails were received by 210 million Chinese netizens in 2007, accounting for roughly 56 percent of total e-mails.

The fourth-quarter figure of junk mail underwent a drop of 3.33percentage points from the same period of 2006, the ISC said.

"This achievement is significant. It didn't come easily." said Huang Chengqing, head of ISC, "Both the government and the industry devoted unremitting efforts to the crackdown."

The society, whose membership covers China's major Internet service providers and telecommunications operators, played a key role.

On June 18, 2007, the Internet Society of China launched an anti-spam processing platform that helped filter unwanted commercial e-mails.

Self-discipline within the industry was also a decisive factor in the fight against junk mail. Major e-mail websites like Sina and Netease joined in building a comprehensive anti-spam processing platform, acknowledging only credited Internet Protocols.

International cooperation played an important role as well. "Timely warnings from other countries helped us contain and dispose of junk mail," said Huang.

China has been the world's second largest spam producer after the United States since 2004.

The nationwide crackdown on spam was in line with the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China's call for a better Internet environment issued at beginning of 2007.