Spam falls after South Korea strengthens e-mail law

A revised law in South Korea designed to regulate unsolicited commercial e-mail, or spam, is proving a success according to the results of a recent study.

An anti-spam task force at the Korea Information Security Agency (KISA) found spam levels dropped among 1,000 users queried three times in the period between March and July this year although the total number of commercial e-mails, both wanted and unwanted, rose slightly, a researcher at the center said Monday.

In March this year 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 and a survey in July put the figure at just over 70 percent.

Behind the fall in the amount of spam received by users is a strengthened anti-spam law, said 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 said via e-mail. "It newly established criminal charges and raised fines to 10 million won ($8,585) from the previous limit of 4 million won."

The revised law prohibited 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 strengthened control of illegal labeling of commercial e-mails and protection of juveniles from spamming.

KISA's latest survey in July found the average number of commercial e-mails received, including those for which consent had been given, was just over 57 per day during the month. Of those, 41 messages were classified as spam with 35 judged as illegal spam and 23 as obscene spam. Those figures represent decreases of 18 percent, 20 percent and 27 percent respectively compared to a survey carried out in March this year, said Chung.

KISA's findings come as several nations around the world are drafting anti-spam legislation and debating the best way to stem the growing amount of spam filling mailboxes worldwide. The issue has been a hot topic already this year in a number of countries including the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and member states of the European Union.

Debates have been focused just as much on the content of legislation as whether it will be effective and lead to less spam.

U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman 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 said to a group of business executives and government officials at a conference in Aspen, Colorado, in August, according to a transcript released by his office. "Eventually, the spam problem will be reduced, if at all, through technological innovation... legislation cannot do much to solve the problem," he said.

South Korea is not the only East Asian nation trying to stem the flow of spam. The Internet Society of China said its members, which include Chinese government bodies, companies and Internet service providers, 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.