14 DAY TRIAL // Spam has followed the natural evolution course of advertising. First designed only for computers, now, as the mobile ads continue to increase in importance, the unwanted messages have ported to the handheld devices in a flash. What better place to target with such an attack than the biggest mobile communications market in the world, China.
The scandal currently underway has been dubbed "Text-message Gate" by the Chinese media, and has managed to draw apologies from the biggest mobile phone carrier and one of the major advertisers. Out of the 555 million cellphone users, over one third have received unwanted advertising text messages. The 200 million targeted have voiced immediately and as a direct result, the carriers have set up hotlines to receive consumer complaints. Both China Mobile and its smaller rival, China Unicorn, have been made a part of this scandal.
China Mobile has taken steps to shut down Focus Media's message service port after the massive spam wave, while the advertiser itself apologized: "Jiang Nanchun did admit this in public, although there was nothing pornographic in the messages, just some ads. But the incident violated our company's rules and we are now working hard to fix the problem," said a spokeswoman for the company, who only identified herself with her surname, Wu. The incident appears to be a mishap of the worst kind, but measures have to be taken to prevent it from ever happening again. Liu Yue, deputy head of the State Council's Office for Rectifying Malpractice, said in a report posted on the web site of the State Council, China's cabinet, that: "We urge parties concerned to beef up self-scrutiny to correct their wrongdoing, which is profit-seeking in defiance of public interests."
At the same time, a new problem arose, that of personal information trading. The exchanging of phone numbers between companies in order to send the advertisements are not regulated under any laws at the moment, and the government is bent on taking action in that direction before it is too late.