Chinese Internet users receive a daily average of nearly 2.5 junk messages each, as e-mail "spammers" are getting ever-aggressive from new technologies, says a survey released by the Internet Society of China (ISC) in Beijing on Friday.

The ISC found that junk messages harassing Chinese netizens are mainly from professional spammers at home, either an organization or a person, who takes advantage of search engines and automated programs.

They are provided with more sources to "scrape" users' e-mail addresses as Web2.0 technologies are becoming more popular in China through the later half of this year, the survey says.

It also indicates that eight out of ten netizens do not know where to file complaints after receiving junk mails, which in turn gives rise to increasingly rampant spamming.

The ISC advised consumers to reveal their e-mail addresses with caution on line, citing that those who have posted them on the Web are twice as likely to receive junk messages as those who have not. Two thirds of Chinese surfers have put up their e-mail addresses on the Internet.

(Xinhua News Agency December 10, 2005)