Korea Hosts Workshop on Spam; BIAC Joins New OECD Task Force

The OECD held its 2nd Workshop on Spam in Busan, Korea on 8-9 September 2004, which was hosted by the Korean Ministry of Information and Communication and the Korea Information Security Agency. The event attracted some 240 delegates (policy makers, business professionals, researchers and internet security specialists) representing 24 countries. The objective of the workshop was to deepen the results of the first OECD Workshop on Spam, held last February in Brussels, Belgium.

At the beginning of the workshop, the OECD announced the formation of an OECD Spam Task Force and presented an outline of its anti-Spam toolkit proposal. Representation on the Task Force is from 27 countries, BIAC and civil society, and there are 56 designated members.

  The following key points emerged in presentations and discussions during the workshop and, in particular, reflect the main points highlighted during the last sessions moderated discussion on next steps:

• Spam is still a problem

• Spam is expected to become a problem on pervasive devices

• Spam and e-mail-born viruses cannot be treated anymore as separate problems

• Technical approaches block spam closer to the senders level

• Spammers use multiple techniques, so anti-spam solutions must be a multi-levelled

• The solution to spam should not be worse than the problem

• International cooperation is important and not only between governments

• Authentication is an important technical tool that needs to be developed further

• Education is important, but public trends dont change fast enough.

• The toolkit brings for the first time a multi-pronged approach with global cooperation. For the toolkit to be effective it needs to be broadly based with input is not only from OECD governments but more broadly government, industry, and civil society.

• The workshop in Busan was not just a one-off discussion. The work begun in the workshop will be continued by the OECD Task Force on Spam in the form of the OECD toolkit.

  Presentations delivered at the workshop and other workshop materials are available online via the OECD work on spam web site at www.oecd.org/sti/spam

  BIAC will be well represented at the first meeting of the new Task Force, to be held in Paris 22 October 2004.

  For more information, please contact Nicole Primmer at the BIAC Secretariat.