How many mobile phone spam texts do you receive a day? According to government data released on Wednesday, Koreans received an average of 0.24 spam messages per day during the first half of this year.

The figure was a 42.9 percent drop from a year earlier and telecommunication officials said the fall came as a result of government and industry efforts to block junk messages.

One of the measures the government has taken is to limit the number of forwarded messages to 500 a day.

The data collected from the Korea Communication Commission and the Korea Internet Security Agency also showed that Koreans received an average of 1.64 spam emails every day.

By Chung Joo-won (juwonc@heraldcorp.com)