14th Sep 2007
China means business in the war on spam
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.
Leave a Reply