ITU to hold spam summit

Telcos and ISPs invited to tackle growing menace of junk email

Dinah Greek, vnunet.com 04 Jun 2004

The world's leading telcos and internet service providers will gather in Geneva next month to discuss the development of an anti-spam framework.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) will serve as a forum for governments, regulators and consumer groups.

Because spam is a potential threat to digital services and a "significant and growing problem for users, networks and the internet as a whole", the ITU has insisted that national and international action is necessary.

The ITU said that spam is clogging email, mobile and instant messaging services with hundreds of millions of messages a day and "has grown into one of the major plagues affecting the digital world".

It said that the annual loss in productivity due to spam is estimated to exceed $10bn in Europe and the US alone.

Discussion will cover areas including technical solutions, consumer and small business education and awareness, legislation, enforcement and international co-operation

Anti-spam organisation Spamhaus, which has been invited to speak at the event, indicated that the forum is "a good start". But the company warned that the current laissez-faire attitude by industry and government in the UK and Europe is harming efforts to fight spam.

"Even China [which ranks second in the world for sending spam] is taking a stiffer line than the UK and European states," said Spamhaus' Richard Cox.

"It is interesting to note that in the US, which has weak anti-spam laws, they are so angry that they are enforcing these [laws] and using other computer misuse laws as well.

"Most of the EU is only paying lip service to our anti-spam measures and we need to enforce them and use stiffer penalties."

The ITU summit will take place from 7-9 July.

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