Hong Kong Spam

Hong Kong is among many other countries trying to use legal action to block spam mail. New legislation is targeted at insuring spammers don't see the area as a refuge from anti-spam law.

The new laws don't only address email spam. They also target fax and mobile phone based spam messages. Last year the government received over 36,000 complaints about junk messages sent via fax. It's interesting to note that the term spam is increasingly used to describe unwanted communications besides email.

On the email front, some users are claiming as much as 90% of their messages are now unwanted. Some reports suggest that spam related activities cost Hong Kong approximately $770 million for the year of 2004.

On the flip-side, the report doesn't mention how much commerce was generated for Hong Kong by spam e-mail. Spammers send their messages because it's profitable. Presumably those profits go someplace.

Asia as a region is generally seen as a problem area for spam. Some spam blacklists even block messages from the continent completely. This creates further problems in that legitimate emails are stopped by programs for blocking mail and don't make it to potential customers over-seas.

The best way to stop junk e-mail is to deploy a program to filter spam on your system. SpamButcher is available for a free 21-day test-drive on this website.

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