Let's cut the spam

Government agencies and telecommunication corporations have long promised to curb the proliferation of spam messages, but their efforts have so far proved fruitless.

According to a recent report, cellphone users in China received more than 300 billion spam messages in 2013, with Beijing cellphone users the worst hit, receiving 2.22 junk messages each day on average.

A comment in People's Daily says the only way to root out the problem is to cut the profit chain.

Obviously, profit is the reason spam messages are rampant; if there was no money to be made there would be no spam.

Spam messages are extremely cheap to produce and easy to spread, and they are the favorite choice of advertisers that are indiscriminately fishing for a catch in a large pool of people. This means huge profits for telecommunication companies. The 300 billion spam messages accounted for almost a quarter of all business messages relayed through China's telecommunication giants. It is impossible that these corporations will voluntarily cut back on the size of the cake they are sharing.

Also a complete profit chain has formed, that includes personal information stealers, underground advertising agents, telecommunication corporations even sellers of mass-message sending devices.

The lack of regulation over China's telecommunication market has also contributed to the plague of spam messages. Message advertising is a normal business service that can offer benefits such as discounted charges, as is the case in many countries. But in China the law fails to protect consumers' right to know and choose whether to accept the service.

To root out the problem, therefore, it is necessary to first strengthen the relevant telecommunication legislation, and, more importantly, strictly enforce the rules so that telecommunication giants no longer dare to ignore consumers' rights in favor of their own interests. Regulations on advertising are also needed to prevent businesses from issuing spam messages in such an outrageous way.

On the other hand, the government should also consider lessening control over the market to allow more legal commercial messaging products to emerge, so that consumers can benefit from legal messages that they have chosen to receive.

(China Daily 04/23/2014 page8)