China's government said it stepped up monitoring of short message services (SMS) sent between the nation's 383 million mobile-phone users to prevent fraudsters, pornographers and other "unhealthy elements" from exploiting the technology.
Police found 107,000 illegal short messages and shut down 9,700 cellphone accounts since the start of last month, Wu Heping (
Banking scams accounted for 44 percent of the messages, followed by advertisements for illegal lotteries, prostitution or pornography services, and illicit requests for financial information, Wu said.
The remaining 26 percent related to "other crimes," the ministry said, without elaborating.
The public security ministry has upgraded its filtering system over the past few years to catch criminals, Wu said.
CONTROL
China's government also is using the technology to control the spread of news and information, according to Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based group that campaigns for press freedom.
Mobile-phone subscribers in China sent 217.76 billion text messages last year, a 58.8 percent increase from 2003, according to the US-based Mobile Data Association.
China is the world's biggest mobile-phone market by users.
The nation has 2,800 surveillance centers to monitor text message traffic, Reporters Without Borders said in a report in July last year that cited a press release by Venus Info Tech.
Beijing-based Venus Info Tech received permission from the public security ministry to market a surveillance system that allows authorities to filter messages for "false political rumors" and "reactionary remarks," the Paris-based group said.
The system generates automatic alerts to police and saves information about suspect texts for 60 days, it said.
INTERNET CRACKDOWN
The crackdown on short-message services mirrors a tightening of rules on Internet content announced in September.
Under the rules, Web sites that post materials that "threaten national security" can be fined, the official Xinhua news agency said.
"We are enforcing the national short messaging law and we are taking our jobs seriously," Wu said at yesterday's briefing.
Of the 107,000 illegal messages tracked since last month, 14,000, or 13 percent, were sent by illegal lotteries, while 7,062, or 7 percent, were prostitution or pornography-related, and 11,000, or 10 percent, came from groups soliciting fake receipts or other financial information, according to the ministry.
So far, officials have frozen 108 bank accounts belonging to criminal organizations in cooperation with the China Banking Regulatory Commission, Wu said.
The ministry didn't disclose the number of people arrested.
In the first nine months of this year, China Mobile (Hong Kong) Ltd's 196.7 million subscribers sent 178.5 billion short messages, up from 109.8 billion a year ago.
CREDIT-GRABBER: China said its coast guard rescued the crew of a fishing vessel that caught fire, who were actually rescued by a nearby Taiwanese boat and the CGA Maritime search and rescue operations do not have borders, and China should not use a shipwreck to infringe upon Taiwanese sovereignty, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The coast guard made the statement in response to the China Coast Guard (CCG) saying it saved a Taiwanese fishing boat. The Chuan Yu No. 6 (全漁6號), a fishing vessel registered in Keelung, on Thursday caught fire and sank in waters northeast of Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). The vessel left Keelung’s Badouzih Fishing Harbor (八斗子漁港) at 3:35pm on Sunday last week, with seven people on board — a 62-year-old Taiwanese captain surnamed Chang (張) and six
RISKY BUSINESS: The ‘incentives’ include initiatives that get suspended for no reason, creating uncertainty and resulting in considerable losses for Taiwanese, the MAC said China’s “incentives” failed to sway sentiment in Taiwan, as willingness to work in China hit a record low of 1.6 percent, a Ministry of Labor survey showed. The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) also reported that the number of Taiwanese workers in China has nearly halved from a peak of 430,000 in 2012 to an estimated 231,000 in 2024. That marked a new low in the proportion of Taiwanese going abroad to work. The ministry’s annual survey on “Labor Life and Employment Status” includes questions respondents’ willingness to seek employment overseas. Willingness to work in China has steadily declined from
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
RSS