English Spam Floods Jpn Mobile Phones

A large volume of English-language junk e-mails marketing male impotence drugs has been sent to domestic mobile phones from overseas since late last month. According to the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry, unsolicited e-mails have been sent to mobile phones in Japanese before, but this is the first confirmed instance of English-language junk e-mails.

The ministry’s Telecommunications Consumer Policy Division said, “Someone overseas must be combining random characters and numerals to generate [possible] e-mail addresses, and indiscriminately sending e-mail to these addresses.”

Prof. Masakatsu Morii, of the Faculty of Engineering at Kobe University, said: “It’s a wonder there weren’t previous cases of junk e-mail being sent in English. I’m afraid that in the future, junk e-mails in many languages will find their way to Japanese mobile phones.” Continue>>