1H Spam 110.34 Million Cases...Text Spam Up 690.1%

Broadcasting Commission and KISA Announce Spam Distribution Status

The number of spam reports and detections in the first half of this year reached 110.34 million, showing a 311.6% increase compared to the second half of last year.

The Korea Communications Commission and the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) announced the "Spam Distribution Status for the First Half of 2023" on the 6th.

Major Statistics on Spam Distribution in the First Half of 2023 [Photo by Ministry of Science and ICT]

The number of voice spam reports and detections on mobile phones in the first half totaled 4.61 million, a 3.1% (140,000 cases) increase compared to the second half of last year, with landline phones (58.9%) being the most common transmission route. By advertisement type, telecommunications subscriptions (60.6%) and finance (21.4%) were the most frequent, while the proportion of illegal loan voice advertisements steadily decreased (32.6% → 11.0%).

The number of mobile phone text spam reports and detections totaled 100.89 million, a 690.1% (88.12 million cases) increase compared to the second half of last year. The Korea Communications Commission and KISA analyzed that the increase in reports was due more to improved reporting convenience than an actual surge in spam volume. Since February, the Commission has collaborated with Samsung Electronics to enhance spam reporting convenience on devices.

The main route for text spam transmission was mass text messaging services (97.3%). Due to strengthened regulations targeting domestic operators, domestic transmissions slightly decreased (second half of 2022, 85.9% → first half of 2023, 83.1%), but overseas transmissions, which evade regulations, increased (second half of 2022, 9.9% → first half of 2023, 14.2%).

Email spam continues to decline steadily. It dropped from 9.57 million cases in the second half of last year to 4.84 million cases (49.4%) in the first half of this year. Notably, spam originating from China significantly decreased (second half of 2022, 7.89 million cases → first half of 2023, 350,000 cases).

A survey of 3,000 mobile phone and email users nationwide (ages 12 to 69) on the average number of spam messages received per person found that the monthly average total spam reception was 9.3 messages, a decrease of 1.51 messages compared to the second half of last year. Voice spam and email spam received via mobile phones were 1.95 and 2.12 messages respectively, both down from the previous half-year, while mobile phone text spam reception slightly increased to 5.23 messages.

Looking at the overall spam distribution status, while the convenience of reporting mobile phone spam has improved leading to a significant increase in reports, the actual amount of spam received by the public has slightly decreased. The number of reports (second half of 2022, 17.24 million cases → first half of 2023, 105.5 million cases) and the number of reporters (second half of 2022, 360,000 people → first half of 2023, 2.91 million people) have greatly increased. However, mass text messaging services still account for a large portion of spam transmissions. Institutional improvements such as strengthening penalties for illegal spam senders and efforts to improve telecom companies’ self-regulation are necessary.

The Korea Communications Commission stated, “We have strengthened spam text blocking by providing a spam transmission blacklist to text message intermediaries and are preparing measures to enhance device filtering to minimize user exposure to text spam.”

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