China investigating massive mobile phone text messaging spam

Elaine Kurtenbach, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SHANGHAI, China - Chinese authorities said Monday they are investigating complaints that millions of cellphone users were spammed with unwanted text messages from advertisers.

The uproar over what China's media are calling "Text-message-gate" has drawn apologies from a major advertiser and the country's biggest mobile phone carrier, China Mobile.

The commercial text messages were sent to more than 200 million mobile phone users through China Mobile and smaller rival China Unicom.

"We urge parties concerned to beef up self-scrutiny to correct their wrongdoing, which is profit-seeking in defiance of public interests," stated Liu Yue, deputy head of the State Council's Office for Rectifying Malpractice.

Jason Jiang Nanchun, chairman of Nasdaq-traded advertising network operator Focus Media Holding Ltd., issued a public apology last week.

"Jiang Nanchun did admit this in public, although there was nothing pornographic in the messages, just some ads," said a company spokeswoman.

"But the incident violated our company's rules and we are now working hard to fix the problem."

China Mobile said it was shutting down Focus Media's message service port, preventing it from sending large volumes of short messages.

Both cellphone carriers also set up hotlines to receive consumer complaints.

Chinese cellphone users, who at more than 555 million are the biggest market in the world, often receive unsolicited messages advertising cars, property and even counterfeit documents.

Reports in the state media put the average received by cellphone subscribers at eight per week.

Earlier crackdowns focused on Internet media companies sending unsolicited text messages. The latest attack on cellphone spam began with an expose by state-run China Central Television.

The government and companies say they are working to clarify regulations on spam message identification and blocking. The absence of laws banning trading of personal information such as cellphone numbers is a key issue.

Zhong Zhihong, an official at the Ministry of Information Industry in charge of data security, urged telecom companies to do a better job of blocking spam, given that it is not technically difficult to do so, the official Xinhua news agency said.

© The Canadian Press, 2008