The Ministry of Information and Communication said Wednesday it is going to crack down on unsolicited commercial e-mail amid concerns increasing numbers of outbound "spam" will tarnish the image of Korea. The ministry's anti-spam measures include building a warning system called e-WAS by the year 2004 and requiring free e-mail service providers to register their Internet Protocol or IP address before sending e-mails for marketing purposes.
The Ministry's move comes on the heels of the Fair Trade Commission which announced anti-spam mail measures Tuesday to step up its efforts to root out the problem of unwanted e-mail in the jointly proposed E-commerce Protection Law coming into effect from July. The FTC said e-mail senders who fail to mark mail as advertisements, or send false, or exaggerated contents will face indictment, or business license suspension.
In addition a commercial e-mail sender will be penalized for writing headlines that confuse a mail receiver, even if the contents in the message do not include false or exaggerated information.
In order to crack down on a variety of illegal activities, such as business operators not disclosing their CEOs or company addresses, the FTC will investigate civil complaints and business licenses in parallel. It will also file charges with the prosecution if it exposes law violations.
An official said e-mail users stood at 20 million as of the end of last year with average daily traffic reaching 100 million.
(Kim Yeoung, hellojin@chosun.com)
