Survey: Spam Down in South Korea

Why do the numbers from South Korea matter? Because the latest figures from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) indicate South Korea is one of the world’s leading mobile markets. About 68% of the population was mobile users in 2006. If mobile spam is down there, it could be decreasing in other parts of the world as well.

According to a survey from South Korea’s Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC), the average number of spam messages per user was down 0.74 per day in 2005 to 0.47 per day in 2006. That is a nearly 60% decrease.

Traditional e-mail spam is also down in the country. Tracing the same time periods, researchers found e-mail spam dropped from 6.9 per day to 5.3 per day. The majority of spam e-mails in South Korea are still from unauthorized loan services. These e-mails account for roughly 3.1 spam messages each day, according to eMarketer.

The MIC says the reduction in spam is due to several anti-spam measures such as limiting the usage of text messaging and using fake cell phones to track spam messages to their source. They also increased the use of mail server registry services.

Tags: email, email filtering, email marketing, spam