Society

Court convicts four for illegal spamming

By Wang Huazhong (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-03-31 08:14

BEIJING - A Beijing court found four people guilty on Tuesday of illegally sending millions of spam messages to mobile phone users as part of a business.

The conviction is unprecedented in China, where spam senders distribute an average of 8.5 junk massages a week to each of China's 700 million mobile-phone users, according to official figures for 2010.

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Prosecutors said the four men had used computer software since November 2008 to collect the numbers of mobile phones registered in Beijing and had sent out more than 10 million junk messages -- about 300,000 each week -- without a license. The messages consisted mainly of advertisements for homes, furniture, ring tones and mobile games.

The court of Xicheng district in Beijing said businesses that send such messages out en masse are technically considered to be value-added telecommunication services, which are required to have a license to operate.

Because the four men had run the business illegally, the court meted out jail sentences ranging from one year and one month in length to one year and six months.

Many netizens hailed the judgment as "anger-deflating". But experts told China Daily the punishment was not necessarily meant to target senders of junk messages.

"This case wasn't about opening fire on spam senders", said Yu Guofu, a Beijing-based lawyer who specializes in cases having to do with information technology. "A business can legally send too many messages if it has a license."

Yu said that, unlike spam sent through the Internet, spam transmitted through mobile phones is fairly easy to control, mostly because only three companies are in the mobile phone business in China.

"Spam senders are actually prized customers of the carriers," Yu said. "And carriers should abide by the law and not infringe on the privacy and communications rights of their subscribers."

Zhao Yi, a spokesman for China's biggest telecommunication provider, China Mobile, stayed silent for more than 10 seconds when a China Daily reporter asked how the carrier would respond if customers complained they were receiving too many spam messages. Later calls to his mobile phone were not answered.

A quick search on Google using the key words "mass-sending" and "short message" produced more than 1 million results.

Certain companies have even boasted of having databases that contain large lists of mobile-phone numbers and of having systems that guarantee the arrival of spam to handheld devices.

One of them, Beijing Yangyang Xintong Technology Development Co, said it can help clients select which mobile phones will receive spam messages.

"We have a large pool of rich people who have bought homes and cars in Beijing," according to a salesperson with the company. "Our clients can go online to track the number of people who receive their messages and whether their messages have been sent. They can do this in real-time, with the use of a name and password we provide."

For those who want to send fewer than 100,000 copies of a message, the company charges 0.06 yuan (0.9 cents) for each copy. The rate is discounted for a larger number of copies.

Some companies said they do not censor messages and will distribute information about drugs so long as they are paid enough.