While Hong Kong may have a reputation as a junk-mail haven, many experts believe China could be a new frontier for e-mail fraud and pyramid marketing.
The number of indigenous spam businesses is still relatively small, but weak legislation, cultural differences and inexperience have made the mainland one of the most appealing for commercial junk mailers.
'I believe the problem about spams [in Hong Kong] is overblown,' said dots21 founder Charles Mok who sees China and Taiwan as far more serious spam sources.
Scott Hazen Mueller, of San Francisco's Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (Cauce), said the majority of spam from China was sent by United States' firms exploiting insecure mail servers to relay their advertising.
Programs such as the popular Sendmail often contain security holes hackers can open to gain control of a mail server, or enable mailers to disguise their origins by using an open mail server on which they have no account (known as third-party relay).
'With specific reference to the mainland, it appears mostly to be relay problems. I have seen some spam in Chinese, Japanese and Korean writing, but most of what I get from overseas is of US origin and in English,' Mr Mueller said.