The Government will take a number of measures including launching a campaign entitled "STEPS" to fight Hong Kong's spam epidemic, the Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology, Mr John Tsang, said on February 24.
Speaking during a luncheon meeting organised by six information and communication technology organisations, Mr Tsang said spamming was a problem that had affected almost everyone in Hong Kong. Drawing on the views expressed to an earlier consultation and the trend on recent developments, the Government will launch the "STEPS" campaign to contain the problem of spamming. The first letter "S" stands for strengthening existing regulatory measures. In conjunction with relevant industry associations and service providers, the Government will start work in two areas: For fax, the Government will work closely with the service providers to reduce the timeframe required to cut off abusers fax lines.
For SMS and MMS, the Government plans to work with the industry to extend the existing code of practice for mobile network operators to cover all SMS and MMS unsolicited promotional messages, including those sent by the operators themselves.
The second letter "T" stands for technical solutions. The Government will collaborate with the industry to organise seminars, conferences and exhibitions to promote the latest anti-spam technical solutions to all users.
Echoing the Australian "Don't Try, Don't Buy, Don't Reply" campaign, the third letter "E" stands for education. "In the fight against spam it is vital that the recipients play their part in denying the spammers by not purchasing anything marketed through spam or, better still, not responding to spam at all." Mr Tsang said.
The fourth letter "P" stands for partnerships. Mr Tsang highlighted that one possible partnership was the development of a common blacklist to filter spam at the local Internet service provider level.
On global partnership, Mr Tsang revealed that the Commerce, Industry and Technology Bureau would soon become one of the Founding Signatories of a Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding on Co-operation in Countering Spam.
"This MoU will facilitate co-operation among Asia-Pacific signatories on many fronts in tackling the spam problem. We will continue to develop international partnerships and play a leading role in the fight against spam," he said.
The last letter "S" stands for statutory measures. Mr Tsang said that the Government believed it would be necessary to enact legislation to regulate spamming, "Such a piece of legislation would prevent Hong Kong from becoming a safe haven sheltering illicit spammers. It would also facilitate co-operation with overseas jurisdictions with similar legislation in investigation and enforcement work against spammers."
The Government has an open mind on the exact form and content of the legislation, but Mr Tsang said that a balance was required between the need to discourage spamming and enabling legitimate e-marketing activities to develop properly.
"Our aim is to work out a legislative framework which is largely acceptable to different stakeholders before we proceed to draft the legislation. We will engage representative stakeholder groups over the next few months for detailed and pragmatic discussions. We intend to introduce the full draft legislation into the Legislative Council some time next year," Mr Tsang said.