Cellphone companies 'block spam for VIPs'
By Pan Zheng |
October 21, 2011, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
TOP officials are placed by telecoms companies on a "red list" to ensure they are not troubled by cellphone spam text messages, according to a lawyer acting in a court case in Guangdong Province.
This is at odds with repeated claims by telecoms companies that they are unable to prevent cellphone users from being bombarded with spam.
A cellphone owner, surnamed Yang, in Guangzhou took the China Telecom Guangdong Branch Company to court last month, claiming he kept receiving spam messages and that his personal information had been leaked.
In an effort to reach an agreement with Yang, a lawyer for Guangdong Telecom said in court that he had been placed on a "red list."
According to the lawyer, those on the red list - mostly provincial and city leaders - do not receive any spam.
This indicates that technology allows the company to shield users from spam.
But when Shanghai Daily called China Telecom and asked about a red list, a member of staff denied any such thing existed.
The only way to block spam was through a shield function some phones have, said the employee.
A report co-launched by Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and China Internet Association showed that in the first half of 2011, domestic SMS users received 13 spam messages on average every week - an increase of 14 percent on the same period last year.
Some 27.3 percent of all text messages are now spam, the report said.
An academic said telecoms companies are reluctant to block spam as they make money from it.
"There's a relationship between operators and spam senders," said Professor Li Shuguang, vice president of the Graduate School of China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing.
"The operator can get considerable income by providing a message sending platform or leaking information about users to spammers."
"So it's not easy to persuade the operator to cut off a source of its own income," said Li.
This is at odds with repeated claims by telecoms companies that they are unable to prevent cellphone users from being bombarded with spam.
A cellphone owner, surnamed Yang, in Guangzhou took the China Telecom Guangdong Branch Company to court last month, claiming he kept receiving spam messages and that his personal information had been leaked.
In an effort to reach an agreement with Yang, a lawyer for Guangdong Telecom said in court that he had been placed on a "red list."
According to the lawyer, those on the red list - mostly provincial and city leaders - do not receive any spam.
This indicates that technology allows the company to shield users from spam.
But when Shanghai Daily called China Telecom and asked about a red list, a member of staff denied any such thing existed.
The only way to block spam was through a shield function some phones have, said the employee.
A report co-launched by Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and China Internet Association showed that in the first half of 2011, domestic SMS users received 13 spam messages on average every week - an increase of 14 percent on the same period last year.
Some 27.3 percent of all text messages are now spam, the report said.
An academic said telecoms companies are reluctant to block spam as they make money from it.
"There's a relationship between operators and spam senders," said Professor Li Shuguang, vice president of the Graduate School of China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing.
"The operator can get considerable income by providing a message sending platform or leaking information about users to spammers."
"So it's not easy to persuade the operator to cut off a source of its own income," said Li.
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