The idea has been floated and rejected in America a couple of times. Now the Chinese are considering e-stamps for email in China as a way of preventing SPAM.

SPAM is a term commonly used to refer to unwanted junk email that is usually of a commercial nature. Internet regulators are pushing for a cyber-postal system, according to the Shanghai Daily News. Some 58% of email in China in the first half of this year was SPAM.

The news came out at the 5th Annual China Internet Conference, held last week in the city of in Jiangsu Province. "We are working with several institutes on development of e-mail stamp technology," said Wang Xiujun, a member of the Anti-Spam Working Committee under the Internet Society of China (quoted in the Shanghai Daily). "It can help filter out spam mail from the source before it is sent out."




China Tech News reported on the events at the conference.

BDL Media CEO Danny Levinson attended the conference. "I think it's going to be difficult to implement so late in the game for China," Levinson said regarding e-stamps. "There are already multiple deliverability problems in China among the different portals..." Levinson went on to say that the affect might simply be to change how Internet users in China send their communications, with email being dumped for instant messaging.

The Shanghai Daily stated that the technology for e-stamps is "still under development." The paper said it was too early to tell whether users would have to pay "postage."