In the First Half of This Year, Mobile Phone Spam Increased by 14% Compared to the Second Half of Last Year... Email Spam Decreased

[Asia Economy Reporter Kang Nahum] Mobile phone spam in the first half of this year increased by 14.5% compared to the second half of last year. In contrast, email spam decreased by 39.7%.

The Korea Communications Commission and the Korea Internet & Security Agency announced the results of the "Spam Distribution Status in the First Half of 2021" on the 29th.

The spam blocking rate of mobile carriers in the first half of this year was 95.8%, an improvement of 2.3 percentage points compared to 93.5% in the second half of the previous year. The total number of spam reports and detections was 34.55 million, a 17.5% decrease from 41.86 million in the second half of last year. The average daily spam reception per user also decreased by 0.01 messages to 0.45 messages.

Mobile phone voice spam was surveyed at 12.59 million, a 13.4% increase compared to the second half of last year. By transmission route, spam sent through landline phones accounted for the largest share at 49.4%, followed by internet phones at 35.7%, mobile phones at 12.3%, and international calls at 2.6%.

Mobile phone text spam totaled 7.07 million messages, a 16.6% increase compared to the second half of last year. Spam sent through bulk text messaging services accounted for 93.9%, followed by mobile phone services at 4.9%, and others at 1.2%.

Email spam totaled 14.89 million messages (500,000 domestic, 14.39 million overseas), with email spam sent from China decreasing by 10.97 million compared to the second half of last year.

Regarding spam types, the most common type of mobile phone voice spam was illegal loans (79.0%), and the most common type of mobile phone text spam was gambling (43.0%).

Among the spam reports received in the first half of this year, COVID-19 related spam totaled 201,810 cases, with stock-related spam accounting for the largest share at 46.8% (94,501 cases).

Additionally, 5,104 cases of spam impersonating financial institutions exploiting the prolonged COVID-19 situation were received, and mobile carriers autonomously blocked a total of 16,731,475 spam messages related to COVID-19.

Han Sang-hyuk, Chairman of the Korea Communications Commission, said, "Illegal spam such as stock investment, illegal loans, and gambling, which exploit the difficult social situation caused by the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, is increasing. We will actively implement illegal spam blocking policies and strengthen on-site inspections and crackdowns on illegal spam senders and businesses to take strict measures."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.