Police crack down on mobile phone spammers

Police rounded up yesterday a total of 38 spammers from 36 companies as part of its nationwide clampdown on spammers using mobile phone short text messaging services.

According to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, the spam networks raked in a combined total of over 46 billion won by sending unsolicited spam text messages discriminately to mobile phone users with the first digits of 060 in their phone number.

In a typical case of illegal spam-messaging, a 40-year-old head of a spam SMS firm, identified by his family name Um, collected a total of 900 million won from September last year till March this year through a phone-sex service.

He sent out millions of obscene text messages randomly to mobile phone users to entice them to call back.

He charged 500 won per 30 seconds or 10,000 won for 10 minutes once phone users responded to the SMS spam and called back, police said.

The police have arrested Um and were seeking arrest warrants for 5 other heads of similar spam networks, while booking 32 others.

It was the first large-scale roundup by police since the Ministry of Information and Communication introduced an `Opt-in` system on March 31, declaring an all-out war against unsolicited mobile messages and calls.

The new system requires all companies to receive consent by recipients before sending commercial messages via mobile phone or fax machine. A violator will be fined a maximum of 30 million won.

(milaya@heraldm.com)



By Lee Sun-young