Society
900,000 phones suspended for illicit texting
(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-02-03 11:29
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About 900,000 cell phone numbers were suspended in 2009 for sending mass illicit or junk text messages, According to an official with Guangdong communication agency cited by the Beijing Morning Paper.
Since Nov. 2005, the provincial watchdog agency has been working with the police to provide a database of unfit keywords to screen and cut off illegal mass texting, a rampant daily headache for the country's 700 million mobile users, said Yang Yuncai, head of the agency's information security office.
Though the magnitude of the service closure increased nine fold from that of 2006, none of the denied users in 2009 filed a complaint within 90 days after the suspension, a legitimate right in case of wrong cancellation.
"None of them complained, which indicated our screen was largely accurate," Yang said.
The provincial official also stressed that the operation of its screen system is based on keyword infiltration and not all text messages are actually checked.
