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China has woken up to the problem of spam email and blocked 127 servers which were identified as being the source of high volumes of unsolicited email.
The move is likely to send shockwaves through the international community of spammers who previously had regarded China as a safe haven in which to base their operations.
Many spammers had based their servers in and around Beijing because they believed they were safe from the long-arm of Western law and of very little interest to the Chinese authorities. But if that situation is now changing a drastic rethink may be in order.
The Internet Society of China today announced that 127 servers have been blocked, eight of which were based within China itself, 90 were based in Taiwan and 29 were based around the world. Any emails sent from these servers will automatically be blocked from reaching Chinese internet users.
Ren Jinqiang, an ISA official told official State news agency Xinhua: "This has been the first large-scale spammer blockade launched by the Chinese Internet industry."
While the blockade will have little short-term impact on the amount of spam being received in the West it shows a growing acceptance by the Chinese government of the large part it has to play in the war on the worldwide spam problem.
According to Steve Linford from Spamhaus 100 of North America's most prolific spammers are based in the suburbs of Beijing. This tightening of controls in China may encourage the spammers to move on to pastures new, with the long term hope being that they either run out of places to hide or run out of the funds to keep relocating.