Shenzhen police have launched a campaign to stamp out the spread of fraud, pornography and rumors through mobile phone text messages.

The police are reminding mobile phone users to be wary of text messages containing dubious or unlawful information. Users are also requested to contact the police immediately upon receiving such text messages, so that the senders can be tracked down quickly.

This campaign is in line with a nationwide crackdown against crime committed via text messages, which was inaugurated by the country's public security, telecom and banking regulators Tuesday.

"In recent months, we have received many complaints from phone users, who were bothered or trapped by text messages involving fraud, such as bogus prize draws, fake 'special offers', or fraud banking information," said a Shenzhen police spokesman yesterday.

Some phone users complained that they had been defrauded out of large sums of money, after they provided their confidential bankcard details to swindlers posing as bank employees in text messages, according to the spokesman.

Shenzhen police had traced at least 20 gangs involved in bank fraud since June, the spokesman said.

The ongoing campaign also targets text messages that are used to spread pornography, sell guns and explosives, and procure clients for prostitution.

Shenzhen's telecommunication administration bureau will increase the threshold for mobile content providers, an official of the bureau said yesterday.

Two telecommunication carriers, China Mobile and China Unicom, are also working on measures to filter and trace unlawful text message information.

Related State departments will soon release a regulation for text message services, the bureau said.

(Shenzhen Daily November 3, 2005)