NPC Rep: Telecoms Not Stopping Spam Texts is a Crime

Garbage text messages is pretty annoying, especially when they wake you up in the middle of the night. But are they a crime? Chen Weicai thinks so, and he says that telecom operators who fail to stop those texts are criminal accomplices.

Being a responsible lawmaker who takes China’s myriad social issues very seriously, Chen spent his free time during last week’s NPC sessions collecting spam texts from the other NPC members. “In one week, I collected 17 fraud/spam texts,” Chen said. Of course, there are 2,987 representatives in the NPC, so 17 isn’t a particularly large number, but probably Chen didn’t find time to talk to everyone. (Plus, Chinese telecoms offer government bigwigs special spam-blocking services regular folks don’t get unless they sue).

But Chen says that in 2011, over 100,000 fraudulent text messages were sent, which cost losses to the people of over 4 billion RMB ($634 million). It’s not clear where he got those numbers; apparently an awful lot of people fall for these spam texts and end up giving money to the senders.

So why don’t telecoms stop these messages? According to Chen, “The telecom department is enticed by large sums of money, and doesn’t filter texts for the masses; this is losing the big picture in pursuit of small profits!” And it’s not a technical problem. When asked, Chen brought up the case of Mr. Yang in Guangdong, who sued China Mobile because he was being harassed by spam texts and was eventually put on an anti-spam list.

Chen suggested telecoms could also screen texts sent from a single number to more than 10,000 people at once. This, he says, would not be an invasion of privacy because sending a text to 10,000 people isn’t something regular people do.

Since sending spam texts can be a crime — a subset of spam texts are also fraudulent — Chen says that telecom operators failing to block the texts are criminal accessories.

On a completely coincidental note, we’re sure, Chen’s PSB department owes telecom operators more than 180,000 RMB ($28,571) after sending a flood of anti-spam warning texts to users over the Spring Festival holiday.