Executives of Chunghwa Telecom, the top telecommunications service company, have so far been averse to taking action on the annoying pornographic e-mails, citing possible infringement on customers' privacy.

But under growing public pressure, Mao issued the instruction to Chunghwa Telecom that is expected to be heeded.

Mao used to head Chunghwa Telecom as chairman and is presently in charge of the Ministry of transportation and communications (MOTC) that supervises all transport and telecom services.

The MOTC is concurrently the biggest shareholder of Chunghwa Telecom.

When questioned by reporters, Mao acknowledged that he personally had stopped using the mail service of the HiNet system run by Chunghwa Telecom long time ago.

But he said if Gmail can help its users filter out unwanted mails, Chunghwa Telecom should have the equal capability of providing the same service to customers.

Chunghwa Telecom should not use the privacy issue as an excuse to turn a blind eye to the problem, he said.

The company should at least allow customers to make the choice of not accepting unwanted mails, he said.

The latest survey of a local Internet association shows that up to 66 percent of the more than 10.4 million Internet users surf online for more than two hours every day.

But 80.5 percent of them were deeply annoyed by the 117.2 billion junk mails running around on the Internet in Taiwan each year.

Their major concerns include possible attacks by viruses and the seemingly endless flow of obscene text and photos plus frauds.

Wong Hsiao-ling, a member of the National Communications Commission, estimated that Internet users spend an average of 30 hours on deleting unwanted mails, causing an aggregate economic loss of NT$44 billion a year in terms of waste of time and resources.

All participants at a seminar hosted by the NCC agreed that it is an urgent issue to draft new rules to stem the flood of spam.

Wong said the NCC has completed the draft version of a statute governing the spam on the Internet, which is presently under review by the Cabinet.

The rules do not carry penalties on people or organizations sending the junk e-mails, but the recipients can seek financial compensation of NT$500 to NT$1,000 for each of such e-mails, she said.

If approved by the Cabinet and ratified by lawmakers, the rules will also enable victims to take class action against the perpetrators, she added.

Some experts said Internet users should not rely on the rules or law enforcement agencies.

The best protection users can take is to guard their e-mail address as highly secret personal data that should not be passed out recklessly, they said.