Yesterday the first international meeting to combat spas ended in Geneva

The first international meeting on countering spam, organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), ended yesterday in Geneva. ITU, part of the UN, deals with issues of international cooperation in the field of communication systems and information exchange. The meeting was attended by representatives of 60 countries and several international organizations, in particular the Council of Europe and the WTO.
As stated in the ITU report, if a year ago spam accounted for about 35% of global electronic correspondence, now its volume has reached 85%. Hotmail and MSN servers alone block at least 2.4 billion messages every day. Economic damage from unsolicited advertising mailings, according to ITU estimates, reached $25 billion in 2003. According to the American company Commtouch, 55% of commercial spam is produced in the United States, but three quarters of it is distributed through China. The top six spammer countries also include the UK, Brazil, South Korea and Canada. “Spam has grown into a major scourge,” said Australian communications chief Robert Horton, who chaired the meeting. “We are facing a global epidemic that can be defeated with concerted global action. The stakes in this fight are nothing less than protecting and keeping the Internet as it is. as we know it. I am convinced that we can deal with spam in the next two years if we act on several fronts simultaneously." On the sidelines, anti-spam experts said that the fight against “electronic waste” is complicated by fundamental differences in the approach to spam by legislators in different countries, and especially by the actual legalization of spammers in the United States. So, if the European Union directive prohibits the distribution of advertising without the consent of the consumer, then the American law gives freedom to the spammer, leaving the user the right to refuse the services of this spammer.
IGOR Ъ-SEDIKH, Geneva

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 124/P dated July 12, 2004, p. 6

ITU calls for fight against spam