A recent nationwide survey of China's spam situation, the
largest of its kind in the country, involved more than 100 cities,
including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu. It covered a
wide range of topics, such as netizens' attitudes toward junk
e-mail, the type of spam they receive and the frequency with which
spam arrives. The survey, conducted by the Beijing-based Kingsoft
Corp., is expected to help counter the junk e-mails that are
running rampant on the Internet and roughshod over its users. The
final results of the survey will be made public in late April.
The unchecked spread of junk mail has been baffling netizens
worldwide. While it is difficult to put an accurate figure to the
losses to Internet users caused by junk mail each year, some
statistics suggest a figure of US$8-10 billion.
Spam significantly increases netizens' Internet and telephone
usage fees.
And those are just the quantified losses. Adding in the mental
suffering of netizens -- accidental deletion of normal mail and the
aggravation of hardware and software damage caused by junk-mail
viruses -- all things considered, the harm caused by spam is
virtually unimaginable.
China has 68 million Internet surfers who get 46 billion spam
mails each year, accounting for 10.4 percent of the world's total.
China has become the second-largest spam receiver, following only
the United States. In 2003 alone, domestic e-mail servers received
a total of 150 billion junk mails, only 60 to 80 percent of which
were filtered by the servers.
In November 2002, the Internet
Society of China (ISC) set up a coordination group to fight
spam. Last year the ISC publicized two groups of spammers' IP
addresses, more than 300 in all. Since then, most of the exposed
spammers have taken appropriate measures. But all to no avail, it
seems that the spam situation continues to deteriorate.
Lacking legal backing, very little can be done to punish known
spammers, said Huang Mingsheng, CEO and COO of 263 Network Group, a
leading Internet service provider. At the same time, very few
domestic e-mail ISPs will invest to develop new anti-spam
software.
To make matters worse, some of the free e-mail providers played
the trick of the thief crying, "Stop, thief!" as they forwarded
junk mail.
The overflow of junk mail has squandered enormous resources.
What's more, many countries have begun to regard China as a hotbed
for spam and many IP addresses are at risk of being blocked as a
result. If things continue this way, China risks becoming an
isolated island in cyberspace.
On March 2, 35.com -- originally China Channel, Asia's largest
registrar for domain names -- launched in Beijing an intelligent
e-mail service that can recognize and filter junk mail, taking the
lead in providing new anti-spam technology.
Filtering junk mail by means of keywords does not tackle the
spam problem at the root, said Gong Shaohui, director of 35.com and
also a member of the ISC's spambusters. "Using the traditional
method, some legitimate mail will inevitably be filtered. Leaving
aside the fact that spammers change the subject, sender and mail
content every day, for most users losing legitimate mail is much
worse than merely getting spam."
The new intelligent e-mail box utilizes advanced artificial
intelligence simulation technology, achieving a spam recognition
rate above 99.8 percent while the rate of error is nearly zero,
said Gong.
At the 2004 Symposium on Anti-spam Technology and Overall
Management held in Beijing, experts from Kingsoft, Sina.com,
163.com and 263 Network Group unanimously agreed to form an
anti-spam technology alliance to crack down jointly on
spamming.
Since spammers are becoming more and more cunning at disguising
junk mail, it is usually impossible for mail servers to defend
against them effectively, said Zhao Jiangbo, a department manager
and spamfighting expert from 263 Network.
With currently available technologies, single mail servers are
unable to contain spam. An alliance involving mail servers, telecom
servers and professional software corporations is essential, said
Zhao.
Major mail servers often blacklist recognized spammers. Members
of the alliance can share their own blacklists, which should have a
deterrent effect on regular spammers, said Pei Yupeng, a senior
manager from 163.com.
The Kingsoft is planning to promote a more effective anti-spam
engine. A technology alliance would be conducive to further
improvement of the engine, which is still in the testing stage,
said Liu Haifeng, the company's lead spamfighter.
Both legislation and technology should be pushed ahead
simultaneously, stressed Li Yuxiao, head of the ISC
secretariat.
Indeed, despite all the appropriate moves made by the mail
servers, the lack of related laws and regulations leaves much of
the anti-spam action floundering.
In order to contain junk mail, legal support is an inescapable
topic, said Yi Xiaoyi, chief of the e-mail technology department at
Sina.com. To tackle the problem, technically speaking, mail servers
have to block spammers' IP addresses, e-mail accounts or even
domains. These measures are simply not feasible without explicit
legal prescriptions, Yi said.
Due to a legislative gap in e-mail administration, many foreign
spammers have forwarded enormous quantities of junk via Chinese
mail servers, said Huang Chengqing, vice secretary-general of the
ISC. Consequently, some overseas anti-spam organizations have begun
to block China's IP addresses, which has severely damaged the
reputation of China's Internet and Chinese netizens.
In February, the ISC publicly appealed to the authorities to
speed up anti-spam legislation and establish an anti-spam system in
which the government, industries, enterprises and the public can
all participate. The ISC has submitted its proposal to higher
authorities for review and, hopefully, approval, said Li
Yuxiao.
A separate proposal for strengthening anti-spam efforts has been
submitted to the Second Session of the Tenth National Committee of
the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) for
ratification. In April, the State Council will hold a seminar to
discuss laws and regulations to enhance Internet safety, and a
comprehensive ordinance on Internet and information safety is to be
drafted.
Fighting invisible foes
As junk mail threatens to swamp the inboxes of netizens, e-mail
service providers and their customers have been dragged into combat
with invisible foes.
263 Network's Zhao Jiangbo said that spammers usually adopt two
different but both highly effective tactics: saturation bombing and
camouflage. Spammers send out hundreds of junk mails every hour
using special software, and once recognized and blocked by the
servers, the junk mail continues to spread under a new
disguise.
Common netizens, with primitive counterattack software, can do
little but delete junk mail item by item, said Zhao. ISPs have more
powerful technological weapons, but they still face tremendous
pressure in dealing with millions of spam messages while attempting
to avoid the collateral damage of eliminating friendly mail.
Liu Jinguang of Kingsoft divides junk mail into two types:
commercial advertising that is simply annoying, and harmful virus
carriers.
Liu said that some virus mails as disguised as elegant greeting
cards that damage netizens' hardware and software. Many worm-type
viruses make use Internet loopholes to spread junk mails through
victims who unwittingly offer up their address lists when they
themselves are infected by the virus.
By using batch mail software that is easily downloaded from the
Internet, an average ADSL user can send nearly 10,000 spam messages
at the press of a button.
Is there any hope of victory? The experts say that the fighting
is going to get worse before it gets better.
The direct damage
The Kingsoft experts say junk mail is "wrecking the country and
ruining the people," and highlight six forms of direct damage.
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Jamming e-mail service facilities, reducing network
operational efficiency and influencing normal mail service.
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Perception of China as a breeding ground of junk mail, with
the possibility of China being isolated from the rest of the
Internet community.
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Spam seriously disturbs daily life and violates the privacy of
Internet users, ultimately costing time, energy and money.
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In the hands of hackers, junk mail becomes even more harmful.
In February 2000, hackers entered and controlled certain broadband
websites. By mobilizing numerous servers' broadband capabilities
and attacking with hundreds of millions of junk mails, the hackers
brought many websites to a standstill.
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Harming e-mail service providers' images. Netizens receiving
junk mails will turn to other service providers if they think the
current ones are not improving their junk mail filtering
systems.
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Spam that spreads fallacies to hoodwink the public, cheat
people out of money and spread pornography has done serious social
harm.
The ISC encourages Internet users to report spam and spammers at
its official website, aspam.isc.org.cn. By cataloguing and
analyzing complaints, the ISC can blacklist known spammers. The
list will be made available to major domestic e-mail service
providers who, pursuant to an agreement can block the
offenders.
How do you know it's spam?
Definitions of spam have changed with time, but it has basically
been identified as follows:
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In August 2000, China Telecom defined junk mail as
advertisements, e-zines or other materials sent to the netizens who
had not requested them; e-mail with no definite sender's name or
address; any use of the China Telecom network to violate ISP safety
and service provisions.
-
In May 2002, the China Education and Scientific Research
Computer Network published the Management Regulation for Banning
Junk Mail. It defined spam as any advertising, propaganda or virus
intruding into an Internet user's e-mail account. Most were sent as
batch mail.
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At the end of 2002, the ISC defined junk mail in the
Anti-Spamming Standards of the Internet Society of China: any
advertising, e-zines, or various types of propaganda materials
received by Internet users who had not requested them; e-mails that
could not be rejected; e-mails that concealed senders' identities,
addresses and subjects; and e-mails containing false information
sources, senders and routes.
(China.org.cn by Li Jingrong and Shao Da, April 13, 2004)