China Signs Anti-Spam Pact

Iphtashu Fitz writes "The Chinese government has joined an international anti-spam effort started by the U.S. and UK. Over the weekend China stated that it would join international enforcement efforts against spam by adopting the London Action Plan on Spam Enforcement Collaboration. The London Action Plan was launched after a conference on spam enforcement hosted jointly by the UK Office of Fair Trading and the US Federal Trade Commission in London in October 2004. It was the first international forum to focus exclusively on spam enforcement. China is well known for being one of the biggest origins of spam, with as much as 20% of all junk e-mail originating from within its borders."

China is only 4th (or so)

[Greg Wright]

China is a very distant 4th place when it comes to spam. You want to know who leads the world in spam output; its the wealthy EU countries followed very closely by Japan-Korea and the US. I don't know where that 20% for china comes from. From a study done in March of 2005:

1) Europe(*) 24.70
2) Japan-Korea 24.24
3) US 22.80
4) Greater China(**) 14.45

(*) European Union countries: 21.85%; Top spam-distributors: French, Spain, Germany, UK
** Including: China, Taiwan, Hong Kong.

source: http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/email/article. php/3491796/ [clickz.com]

Of course, I also see numbers like this from a slightly older article:

"Sophos, Inc., an anti-virus and anti-spam company based in Lynnfield, Mass., reports that the U.S. -- sending out 42.53 percent of all spam -- sits far atop its list of the world's Top 12 Spam-Producing Countries."

So, just depends on who you ask on how it breaks down, however, either way, it isn't China.

European spam kings?

[Savage-Rabbit]

You want to know who leads the world in spam output; its the wealthy EU countries ....

Both the USA and the EU have approximately the same number of internet users (US 200 million vs. EU 215 million as of March 2005) and their share of the total spam generation rate (US 22.8% vs. EU 24.7%) roughly roughly corresponds to those numbers. This is not surprising since alot of the spam generators are zombie Windows boxen owned and operated by people with a very limited computer knowledge. It seems to me that all we can conclude from these statistics is that the level of 'computer-cluelessness' among the general public is about the same on both sides of the pond. Even so, I care fairly little about where the actual Spam Servers/Zombie PCs churning out the crap mail are located. What would be more interesting is a statistical analysis of where the people owning or controlling all these spam servers and zombies are located? Which countries are failing to deal with the spam companies causing the problem? Take a look at the top ten list at the bottom of this page [spamhaus.org] the USA claims no less than six of the top ten ROKSO spammers I don't see a single spam king from an EU country on that list.

Re:Easy Solution!

[patio11]

We had a university try that on us once (I work for a technology incubator in Japan). We were going to pay one of their professors a sum in the low five figures (USD) to come out here and give a conference. He never got the invitation due to spam filtering. I wasn't in the room when that prof chewed out his IT department, obviously, but I was in the room when our boss chewed out him on the telephone for trying to justify the policy (direct quote: "Japan is not #$#$$&$%# China, dickwad" -- my boss studied at Harvard and apparently majored in Intercultural Cursing, because I've seen him do it in four languages now).