South Korea Becomes Infamous For Being World’s Fifth Spamme

The international anti-spam agency, Spamhaus has listed South Korea among the five worst spam mail havens in the world. On January 2, 2007, the agency pointed out 53 Korean ISPs that hosted a minimum of one Internet Protocol (IP) address spamming unsolicited e-mails in large volumes.

Most of the ISPs hosted less harmful spammers but 16 of them were blacklisted. Three other ISPs responsible for spam activities have terminated the operations of these professional spammers.

According to Spamhaus Web site, the ISP of the net block usually the one providing connectivity to the spammer is responsible for each IP address on the list. As of December 31, 2006, Spamhaus collected 172 IP addresses in Korea that flood every other email recipient in the world with spam mails as it does to its own nationals.

The top five spam senders in the world include United States leading with 2,070 spammers, with China following with 367, Russia with 243, Japan with 229 and finally Korea. During 2004 and 2005 Korea was in the third position of the spam list after the U.S. and China, but moved down to the seventh place last May. With this, some observers concluded that the country was no longer a major spam-relaying base. However, the good feeling subsided as the country retraced to the sixth spot in October and then climbed higher to the fifth the next month.

In line with this rise and fall, the number of spam-distributing IP addresses in Korea increased from 161 in May 2006 to 165 in November same year and 172 in December. Among the conspicuous 172 IP addresses, Kornet hosted the maximum with 22 while Dreamline trailed by 20 and LG Dacom by 18.

This is contrary to the government's announcement that it has gone all extent to delay e-mail spam over several years in the past. In support of this, the Ministry of Information and Communication, said Koreans received an average of 5.3 junk e-mails late 2006, lower than 6.9 in 2005.

For years, spammers practiced spamming by exploiting e-mail servers but now they rely on virus-infected zombie computers.

Related article: South Korean ‘Queen Of Spam’ Detained

» SPAMfighter News - 1/6/2007