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September 24, 2016

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Crackdown on telecom scammers

By Leng Cheng and Zhu Shenshen | September 24, 2016, Saturday | Print Edition

CHINA yesterday announced its determination to crack down on telephone scams following a number of cases that highlighted a growing problem.

Public Security Minister Guo Shengkun called scams a “major public hazard” that needed the combined efforts of various departments.

Last year, police registered 590,000 telecom fraud cases, compared to 2011’s 100,000, leading to losses of 22.2 billion yuan (US$3.3 billion). Callers often impersonate officials or authority figures and prey on the elderly, students or the unemployed.

The fraud has spread overseas, Reuters said, with Chinese speakers recruited in Taiwan increasingly setting up operations in East Africa or Southeast Asia.

A joint notice detailing measures to curb such crimes was issued by the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the People’s Bank of China and the China Banking Regulatory Commission.

“Telecom and Internet fraud crimes seriously impact the people’s legal interests, destroy social harmony and stability, and must be resolutely punished,” it said.

Telecom companies China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom are required to have all users register with their real names by the end of the year and 96 percent by the end of next month. Otherwise, their services will be shut down.

Carriers will also be required to clean up unnecessary numbers belonging to one person. In a previous inspection, some people who had only registered once were found with five mobile numbers.

Telecom companies will also be able to intercept numbers operated by virtual telecom operators, clamping down on voice and text messages used to harass users.

Banks are being urged to implement rules introduced in March that allow customers only four accounts at any one commercial bank compared to the previous unlimited number.

“Starting from December 1, one individual could only open one deposit account for each bank, and one payment account for each payment service,” the notice said, adding that for any companies or individuals that rent or sell bank or payment accounts will be prosecuted and face an accounts freeze for five years.

The move is aimed at the so-called “zombie accounts” used by scammers.

In addition, money transfers between different accounts using banks’ ATMs will be delayed for 24 hours from December 1, to allow time to retrieve money in the case of a scam.

Last month, the death of a student who had been cheated out of her tuitions shocked the public.

Xu Yuyu, a student from a poor family in Shandong Province, lost 9,900 yuan (US$1,484) after scammers posing as education officials told her to pay her tuitions into their bank account. Xu suffered a heart attack that her father attributed to the incident.

In 2015, lax mobile security caused losses totalling 110 billion yuan in China, according to Qihoo 360, the country’s biggest online security company.

Of the 82 percent of bankcard holders using mobile banking to make payments, an eighth encountered Internet-related fraud in 2015, according to a security report by China UnionPay.

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