In the ongoing battle against the lucrative but questionable spamming business, Hong Kong issued a new law which will fine spammers with up to $128,000 US dollars and face up to five years in jail.

The southern Chinese city will regulate all messages sent by electronic means that advertise or promote goods or services, including faxes, emails, SMS text and pre-recorded voice messages. The ordinance will be implemented in two phases. Phase one will be effective on Friday and it will prohibit the use of dubious techniques such as brute force, dictionaries or harvesting software that searches the internet for addresses to send a large quantity of commercial electronic messages.

In a second phase, senders of commercial electronic messages must provide accurate sender information, and easily accessible unsubscribe methods and comply with such requests within 10 working days. In addition, Do-not-call Registers will be set up for public use, and it will be applicable to pre-recorded voice or video messages, fax messages, SMS and MMS messages only.