Obnoxious intrusions
(LIANG YU)
08/27/2001
Despite its popularity among mobile phone users, the short message has become problematic for a growing number of people. Those who are most annoyed object to the frequent appearance of "trash" messages on their phones. Tang Xiao, 25, an office executive in Shanghai, said the first message he received was a junk one. It read: "Our company specializes in reclaiming goods like mobile phones, cars and computers, and we can offer a competitive price. If interested, contact (name and phone number)." Tang couldn't resist dialing the number. He learned that the message came from Xiamen in East China's Fujian Province, from a man who claimed to work for a firm connected with Xiamen Customs. The man was vague about how he obtained Tang's number, saying only that a friend gave him it. He admitted that 50 messages had been sent to Shanghai mobile phone users. Since then, trash short messages of unknown origins have begun to appear on Tang's cellphone, on subjects ranging from a new stock-market service to a novel IT product. "You can stand one or two such messages, but how can you tolerate so many when they are useless?" he said. Short messaging is the practice of typing a brief communication on the keypad of your cell phone and transmitting it via a special platform to another cell phone, where it appears in printed form. It has the advantages of being easy and cheaper than direct calling, which makes it attractive to telemarketers who may send hundreds of messages a day. Messages can be sent in Chinese or English at 0.1 yuan (US$0.012) per message, compared to 0.5 yuan (US$0.06) per minute charged to cell phone callers plus the additional charge to recipients. Short messages are a cheap way to communicate and to acquire needed information like updated news or stock tips. China now boasts 120.6 million mobile service subscribers. China Mobile expects to handle up to 10 billion short messages this year, contributing 1 billion yuan (US$120 million) in revenue. In Shanghai, short messages seem also to be on the upswing. Shanghai Mobile, China Mobile's local operation, says it handles 70 million to 80 million messages a month, while Shanghai Unicom, China Unicom's local branch, claims an average of 21 million messages monthly. While this growth has been mostly positive, the service has proved a marketing tool that some people could do without. Along with embarrassing and x-rated jokes, people feel harassed by a flood of messages they do not want or need. Many feel their privacy is being violated when their number is used for junk messages. "I have no idea how they get my number to send this rubbish to me," complained one user. Mobile telecom operators have few solutions. "We usually sign an agreement with websites before they offer short message services, and that agreement requires them to let users know in advance what the message is about and the price of receiving the short messages," said Zhang Jie, a marketing executive with Shanghai Mobile. "We may terminate those websites' services if we receive consumer complaints about trash messages. But people seem to be simply deleting such messages, and so far we have received few website-targeted complaints," she said. It is far more difficult to prevent junk messages in direct cellphone dialing. There is no technology that allows mobile telecom operators to monitor the huge amount of messages transmitted in this way. Trash messages can be sent to a group of mobile phone users simply by arranging telephone numbers into a regular and progressive sequence. The approach is random but message senders often score hits using this method. Telemarketers also obtain cellphone numbers by buying personal data from market research companies, which collect phone numbers routinely along with other information.
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