Japan – Reinforce Spam Laws

As per the news by Virus Bulletin on July 16, 2007, the Japanese ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications plans to introduce some actions to improve the existing anti-spam rules in Japan, and will impose more restrictions on users and organizations that send uninvited mails, as per a Yomiuri Shimbun's report.

But the experts said that Japanese produce much of the country's spam and it is targeted only towards Japan. Except the occasional open relay in Japan, users don't get a chance to see much spam from Japan attacking the outside world.

Present laws, which are analogous to the US CAN SPAM regulations, let spam distribution as long as sufficient and precise information is subsumed, together with opt out plans. It also alerts that all messages of this kind should be clearly categriosed as uninvited mails, so that rules of simple filtering can be applied. Imprisonment of one year and compensation of upto US$ 8,200 (1 Million Yen) are charged, but only a small number of trials have been conducted under the present system.

In Japan, the awareness for spam has raised tremendously from 76% in 2005 to 93% in 2007. Symantec, a research firm, has pointed towards a global increase in scam spam and also claimed that the most affected region is the APJ (Asia Pacific and Japan). This could be partly because of the prominence of invoice scam in that area.

With the coming of invoice spam, spammers will make dubious invoices, which will appear like the ones from legitimate companies, and will finally sell them to gain profits. Symantec said that it is trend the company will analyze, if it spreads globally.

Symantec claims that the most common spam all over the world is related to financial services and made up for the 30% of all uninvited mails.

The most recent proposals, which are still at the stages of planning and will be presented to the Diet session in 2008 , will likely to ban all uninvited mails and will also prohibit all attempts of phishing. There will be more serious punishment, and international cooperation is demanded in order to combat spam growing outside Japan.

Related article: Japan Seeks International Cooperation to Fight Spam

» SPAMfighter News - 7/26/2007