Samir Patil has blogged on the Symantec site that the company’s Symantec Probe Network has registered a DECREASE in spam from domains registered in China since early December. He reported that .cn spam fell from 30-50 percent daily to about 20 percent.
“It appears that the drop is due to the recent enhancement in domain registration procedures introduced by China’s Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). On December 11, CNNIC announced a new registration procedure for .cn domains,” he said.
In December, China announced that those registering domains in the country would be required to do so using paper forms. Also, only businesses registered by the state would be allowed to register domains.
Spammers commonly used sites registered in China for Canadian pharmacy spam campaigns.
This is great. Maybe the one thing that spammers can’t do is something as low-tech as filling out paper forms.
I’ll be interested to see:
— if the Chinese authorities can lower that 20 percent figure further
— what countries the spammers will move to
— if any other government tries the same approach.
Tom Kelchner