Sunday, February 27, 2011

China Cleans Up Spam Issue

China was, at one point, the world's leading source of spam, but lately they have been dropping in the rank because they are slowly beginning to clean up this issue. Cisco Systems' IronPort group ranks China to be number 18 in terms of spam-producing countries. This is good, compared to two years ago when they ranked in the top 5. In 2009, they were ranked number 3 and by the end of 2009 was when they began to drop off significantly. Currently, China is ranked number 20 which is right behind Spain.

China is currently the home to approximately 420 million Internet users, and many of these users are accessing the Internet through hacked computers. In 2006, China began recognizing the major concerns and problems caused by the spam overload coming from their country. An anti-spam initiative was launched that brought network operators and security companies together in order to discuss this issue. Anti-spam supporters from the United States are now working more with China's members of the Internet Security team to work out standards and better ways of cooperating.

The thought process is that hopefully the U.S. will learn a few things from China and its efforts in fighting spam.Currently, the U.S. remains the top spamming country and is the source of about one-fifth of the world's spam.Although some security experts say that some of the spam messages are created by spammers that are not residing in the country, but the fact that the U.S. has so many hacked machines at our disposal is becoming a huge problem.

In an effort to control China's spam problem, they have made it more difficult to register new Internet domains  have put on more stricter controls on those who are able to send out emails. Although China is coming up with more and more ways to control their spam breakout, it is being studied that spammers have moved from China to Russia now. Although this may remain true, experts are having a hard time keeping track of China's improvements because they keep most of their doings on the "down low.

It is kind of scary how quickly spamming can become a problem, and I was unaware that the United States is top in this spam outbreak. Although, I am not shocked. We become aware of this issue, but not much is done about it. It seems as though China really put their foot down and decided that this wasn't going to be a problem in their country. Maybe other countries, now Russia ... and the U.S. need to consider doing the same.

Article Name: China Cleans Up Spam Problem
by: Robert McMillian

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9211658/China_cleans_up_spam_problem?taxonomyId=17&pageNumber=1

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