Anti Spam - SpamUnit

China is cracking down on spammers in the country in news that is sure to delight spamwatchers everywhere. An increasing amount of global spam - much of it reaching English-speaking countries - comes out of China, and the authorities are now looking to provide their own spam blacklist to help international efforts to stop spam. While spam black lists are not new, this is the first government-mandated attempt by China to curb the problem by giving ISPs the world over the tools they need to block spam IPs and spam mail addresses.

The spam list is available at www.Iscbl.Anti-spam.Cn and can be used in conjunction with Spamhaus blacklists and others. A non-spam whitelist was also posted, allowing those email marketers who stay on the right side of the law to be exempt from email spam blocking programs. This shows that the Chinese government is not totally against email marketing, but remains committed to spam prevention in China proper and also amongst Hong Kong spammers.

Spam firewall owners internationally greeted the news warmly but realise that much more still has to be done, particularly from countries with spam laws less stringent than those of China.

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The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 is a landmark spam law in the United States, but it’s not the only antispam law on the table. The individual states also have powers to make their own spam laws - and New Jersey is the latest one to do just that. The “New Jersey CAN SPAM Act” aims to crack down even tougher on spammers than the national CAN SPAM law. Among the spam techniques forbidden by the potential new law are the use of false information to register for webmail accounts to bypass spam blacklists; also illegal would be unauthorised access to other computers - such as via botnets or virus control - for the purpose of using them as a spam sender.

The penalties are harsh. Lawbreakers could be jailed for up to twelve months and fined $1,000 for the smallest offences, with tariffs ranging up to $25,000 and 10 years in prison for the more serious breaches of New Jersey Spam law. American spam law, then, is serious both on state and national level, but whether these penalties can get rid of spam in New Jersey remains to be seen; after all, spam is an international business.

The law has passed the NJ Senate and will head to the NJ Assembley shortly. If it proceeds past there, it will become law, and spammers will surely depart New Jersey with haste. But will it makes a difference to regular New Jersery internet users?

Read more at MSN

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