Spam E-Mails in Chile Continue to Surge

According to the Chamber of Commerce, the number of spam e-mails hitting the inboxes of netizens in Chile has increased steeply in last few years.

Chilean company Coasin has estimated that 80% of e-mails received by majority of Chileans are spam. The spam e-mail figure was recorded at 70% in 2003 in a survey conducted in Chile by the African Press International (API). After that, API aimed to reduce the magnitude of locally created spam by 80%.

The country has however, failed to accomplish its mission of lowering the level of spam, as the rising trend of spam in the country is clearly visible. As a result, companies and individual netizens have to spend a lot of money and time on purchasing more e-mail storage space, installing detection systems, and clearing their accounts. Security experts are trying to discover the reason for such a high surge.

As reported by the santiagotimes.cl on September 3, 2009, this increase is mainly because of the broadband growth and the increased number of people using Internet in the country, said Renato Jijena, Professor of Information Technology law, Universidad Católica located in Valparaíso (Region V).

Further, Jijena said that people are increasingly using Internet as medium of advertising their products for phishing and fraud. phishing can be described as an act of sending an e-mail to a user masquerading as a well-recognized genuine company in an attempt to con the user into revealing private information which is later used for identity theft.

According to the security experts, spammers targeting Internet users in South and Central America are mainly from Mexico and Argentina. Furthermore, Chile does not have a 'blacklist' like the US that makes it easy to identify the source of spam-email. The country has not yet rated any of the ISPs as 'blacklisted'.

According to José Roa, Director, Chilean National Consumer Service (SERNAC), people must have an option to discard receiving the e-mails including promotions and advertisements, reported santiagotimes.cl on September 3, 2009.

However, according to Jijena, this is just not enough. He feels that it is important to enforce strict filtration standards, to block unsolicited promotional e-mails from entering into the inboxes.

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» SPAMfighter News - 10/1/2009