Spam email in Vietnam
| 17:54' 30/07/2007 (GMT+7) | ||
Those companies are ready to help their clients to send spam emails to a million mailboxes a day. They also sell mail delivery software products and lists of millions of e-mail addresses of Vietnamese people and even the software to make forged websites to illegally collect e-mail addresses at very cheap prices. If one makes the mistake of registering his email addresses on some email lists to receive news at some websites, he will need 5-10 minutes or more each morning to delete spam emails. Complaints from offices about spam email, especially those in Vietnamese language, are becoming more and more common. Spam email delivery: from free to professional service “Our company now has a promotional programme: providing free of charge a software product to send advertising e-mails to 10,000 email addresses every day. This software can deliver advertising e-mails very fast, with high rate of success. We also have professional e-mail delivery software which is much better!” A young man named T advertised the above services of his company, which is based in Ba Dinh District, Hanoi, and specialises in services related to advertising via email, to VietNamNet reporters. At the website of this company, services offered by this firm include selling email address lists, sending advertising emails of large number, selling professional spam email delivery software. This website advertises that their software can send from 30-50 million spam emails a month. The price of such software, according to the young man, is less than VND500,000 (US$30). By searching on Google, VietNamNet reporters found tens of other companies with addresses and telephone numbers which stated they provided spam email delivery solutions which are ‘very professional’. VietNamNet reporters called the phone number on one of the websites and a young girl confirmed that it was the number of a limited liability company in Hoang Mai district, Hanoi. When the reporters said that they wanted to advertise a personal website, the girl confirmed: “The most effective means is sending e-mails”. According to her, some male students who presented websites to their girlfriends paid several hundreds of thousand dong to send spam mails to advertise those websites. “We have around 10,000 email addresses. They are classified to serve different requests of customers. Our professional email delivery software can send emails with 100% success, which are not hindered by Vietnamese Internet service providers. The price for this service is only VND400,000 ($25),” the girl said. Solutions to collect email addresses As a new advertising service, many companies are offering solutions to collect email addresses without paying attention to the owners of email addresses. A limited liability company advertises that it sells software to search for email addresses for VND500,000. This software can search email addresses by key words, for example email addresses with @hn.vnn.vn. This company is also ready to search for email addresses in narrower fields, for VND100/email address. Many illegal software products have been commercialised by IT companies to collect email addresses. These software products are installed on the homepages of websites, which ask visitors to register their email addresses to receive news or become members. They then automatically classify email addresses into different groups based on the information that email address owners provide. Most websites and forums don’t commit to keep the email addresses of their members secret so many people accidentally provide their email addresses for spammers when they participate in online forums. Who knows? So I’m not scared Playing the role of an employee of a private company, a VietNamNet reporter met with the salesman of spam email delivery software of an IT company in Hanoi. The reporter said that his newly established company wanted to advertise their operations through email but the company wanted to be sure that email advertising solutions that it bought were legal. “What law? What rule is there about it? Nobody in Vietnam bans you from sending advertising emails. Moreover, our software allows you to add any email address to the sender status so nobody can know that you are the spammer,” the salesman said. Who suffers? Internet users, of course! In 2005, one of the Internet service providers in Vietnam was named on the list of senders of huge numbers of spam emails. Companies that use services of this ISP could not send emails abroad because their mails were barred. Thus, the user is the sufferer. “Recently, the number of spam mails in Vietnamese has boomed, causing many troubles and losses for our company. Sometimes the network of our company is blocked and we can’t send emails because of spam mails,” said Viet, the deputy director of a company in Hanoi. Spam mails not only inconvenience users but also affect the operations of many organisations since their networks are jammed by spam emails. Not only users but also ISPs and Internet resources are affected by spam emails. This worry has become a fact as spam email delivery services are offered on many websites. Vietnamese Internet users are waiting for measures from management agencies to control spam emails. Viet Nam Net |
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