Pornographic Mobile Sites Flourish in China, As Set-Up Gets Easier

Chinese authorities are playing an increasingly fast-paced game of whack-a-mole with mobile/WAP pornography sites in China, with numerous companies found to be offering server hosting packages for mobile sex sites for as little as 500 RMB (US$78) per year. It’s a growing issue in the country, as more children as young as primary school age own phones, leaving them vulnerable to spam SMS that could lure them to such websites, or unwittingly sign them up for adult MMS subscriptions.

Mobile websites are generally less strictly regulated than conventional sites, and the growing number of dubious companies offering cheap hosting and ready-made WAP site templates makes it easier for fly-by-night ‘yellow’ sites to flourish.

A report on the Chinese site TechWeb yesterday revealed the extent of the problem, and the fears of parents on this issue. With some covert investigation, it found shady hosting services that could put you in the mobile smut business for as little as 200 RMB for set-up, and then 500 RMB per year. But that’s presuming the site lasts that long, although authorities are finding it difficult to patrol and shut down inappropriate – and illegal – WAP sites.

The article quotes a father from the city of Nanjing, who took a look at his school-age son’s mobile to find a pornographic WAP site loaded in the phone’s browser.

These set-up deals are being advertised all over the Chinese web, with the hosting companies hiding behind disposable QQ accounts that people can contact if they want to launch a spam/porn WAP site. It seems that China’s ministry of public security needs to find these vendors who’re enabling the boom in dodgy WAP sites as well.

Subscription services are another threat, especially given the growing likelihood of their spam reaching mobile users who are children. Such SMS or MMS services can lock you into a phone-credit draining daily pornographic picture set. (Similar spam services for weather, property deals, sports news, and traffic alerts are a daily hassle for many phone users here).

As a measure of how tough it can be to shut down and catch the perpetrators in such online crimes, think back to our story from August of the nine-year manhunt to arrest China’s most notorious pornographer.

Currently, China has half a billion wired netizens, but an even more staggering 900 million mobile users – making mobile services a more attractive proposition to both legitimate and illegal website operators.

[Source: TechWeb – article in Chinese]