China fines its first spammer £331

The Chinese government has fined a company 5,000 yuan renminbi (£331) for sending out spam.

It is the first time the Chinese government has penalised a company for sending junk email since an anti-spam regulation came into force in March.

Xinhua, the Chinese government's news agency, said under the regulation commercial emails must be sent with the text 'AD' in the header and must contain options for recipients to subscribe or cancel further messages. If they fail to do this they can be fined up to 30,000 yuan (£1,989).

The government's Internet Society of China said the company which was fined, Hesheng Zhihui Enterprise Management Consulting, "was found to have bulk sent emails containing advertisements to internet users since January".

The Guangdong provincial authority fined the Shenzhen company and ordered it to stop spamming immediately.

China has 110 million internet users and a population of 1.3 billion people.