China no longer top source of spam mail

BEIJING - China has come down the rankings of countries that are major sources of global spam mail, a latest report has said.

China, which was ranked second in 2006, now ranks 15th in the world, and the amount of spam mail originating from China is only 1.9 percent of the global spam.

The US tops the global list, and is the country of origin of 13.1 percent of the world’s spam mail, a latest monitoring report by British security firm Sophos has said.

The report took into consideration spam mail in the first quarter of 2010.

This drop in the rankings shows China’s internet regulations to fight against spam mail have been effective, Global Times reported, citing a statement from the Internet Society of China (ISC).

The government and the ISC recently stepped up efforts to crack down on the steady flow of unsolicited e-mails in China, it said.

Spam has become such a problem that the government has involved industries that oversee the country’s technology market and the police to help with anti-spam efforts.

China’s ministry of information industry issued a set of regulations governing e-mail services which went into effect in March 2010.

The regulations require e-mail service providers to register the IP (Internet Protocol) addresses of their e-mail servers with the authorities.

Other measures include a requirement for e-mail service providers to keep logs of e-mail traffic, including the IP addresses of all e-mail senders and recipients, for 60 days.

Service providers that violate the new regulations would be fined up to 30,000 yuan ($3,729), the report said.