Friday, January 29, 2010
No electronic communication is safe from government censors in China, and that includes text messages containing sexual content. As part of its crackdown on “illegal” activity, the Chinese government has ordered the country’s top cell phone providers (China Mobile and China Unicom) to block transmission of any text message containing risqué words. China Mobile, the world’s largest cell phone company, has more than 500 million customers and handles 1.7 billion text messages a day.
Getting caught trying to send a “sext” message can result in more than just having the communiqué blocked. One story out of China reported about a man had his phone deactivated by his service provider because he was caught sending a lewd message. The man had to visit a local police station to sign a letter promising he would no longer do any sexting in order to get his phone reactivated.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Sorry China, No More ‘Sexting’ (by Aaron Saenz, Singularity Hub)
China Begins Monitoring Billions of Text Messages (by Malcolm Moore, Telegraph)
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