SENDING junk e-mail for advertising purposes to people without their permission can incur penalties of up to 30,000 yuan (US$3,699) in China.

The newly published regulations on e-mail services, which will take effect March 30, require all advertising e-mail to be titled "guanggao" or "AD," Xinhua said Tuesday (Feb 21).

As part of the crackdown on junk e-mail, the China Internet Association will release a blacklist of mail servers accused of sending junk mails for the convenience of netizens. Junk mail senders who "spread illegal contents and cause serious damages" may have to pay a fine of between 10,000 yuan and 30,000 yuan, the regulations said.

The Ministry of Information Industry (MII) also said that mobile phones must be registered under users' real names, and that text messaging will be controlled more tightly this year to prevent the spread of illegal messages.

However, some industry insiders doubt how well the rules could be enforced.

Several countries including the United States have anti-spam laws, yet junk e-mail continues to be an online pest, with much of it coming from or through computers in other nations.

China now has 111 million Internet users, second only to the United States. More than 70 percent of Chinese netizens have shopped online, according to a survey conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 2005.

Each e-mail subscriber in the nation received an average of 16.8 pieces of junk e-mail a week from August 2004 to April 2005, Xinhua said.

"China has become seriously affected by junk e-mail," said Li Guobin, an official with the MII.

As for the mobile phone rules, the call for a real-name system has been there for a long time to fight against mobile phone and text message fraud. Xinhua forecasted in December that MII would soon require that all mobile phone users - including the large number of people who use prepaid phone cards - register with telecom providers or face a service cutoff.

Editor: Wing