The survey, released on Tuesday, shows that 35 per cent of all 4,721
users questioned across the country receive five to 10 spam messages a
week, while 15 per cent get 10 to 20. On average, each user receives at
least eight spam messages a week, questionnaires show.
Common junk messages include advertisements, swindles, information on
illegal selling of vehicles,
weapons or fake diplomas, and short message services (SMS) that users
never signed up for.
However, the survey shows that only 6.1 per cent of users have ever
appealed to supervisory departments and about half of them do not know how
to cancel unwanted SMS subscriptions.
Lu Xiangdong, vice-president of China Mobile Communications
Corporation, said even he can't escape from spam messages.
In order to control spam messages, mobile operators should be more
vigilant about suspiciously large numbers of text messages from one
sender, said Lu. On the other hand, mobile service providers should offer
users more healthy content such as news, e-books and TV programmes.
To step up such efforts, China's four major mobile operators, China
Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom and China Netcom, joined 14 other
service providers, including Sina.com and Sohu.com, to establish a "Green
Mobile Culture" association on Tuesday. Members promised not to spread
unhealthy or illegal information, and make further efforts to wipe out
spam messages.