Spam slams the mobile phone world

China’s mobile phone owners are the world’s most avid senders of short text messages.

Like most owners of a cell phone, my device often buzzes to the arrival of new text messages. But an increasing number of those messages are intrusive junk ads and scams, not messages from friends.

Spam is now inundating the mobile world in China. Even the state Xinhua news agency said so recently. According to this Xinhua report, some mobile phone users (including me) receive an average of nearly six spam text messages a day.

“Common junk messages,” Xinhua says, “include advertisements, swindles, information on illegal selling of vehicles, weapons or fake diplomas, and short message services (SMS) that users never signed up for.”

Then there’s the case of the flirty nurse. According to this posting on the YouMeiTi blog, one scam has someone posing as a flirty nurse in messages, seeking online boyfriends to keep her company. The scam has outwitted some 400,000 people.

In China, users pay about one-tenth of a yuan, or about .72 of a U.S. cent, per text message sent. So as I understand it, companies that can induce people to send text messages stand to earn money. On average days, I mainly get messages offering property for sale in Beijing.

Chinese sent 429 billion text messages last year, according to this Reuters story. That means each user sent an average of 967 messages during the year.

Another weird mobile annoyance is also occurring. The phone rings once in the wee hours of the night. I get up to see if it’s an emergency call from overseas that cut off. It almost never is. Instead, it’s a spam call, trying to get people to call back to a local number, generating revenue in ways I don’t completely understand to the caller.