China to censor text messages

BEIJING, July 3 (UPI) -- China issued Saturday a set of guidelines on filtering pornographic, fraudulent and illicit mobile phone text messages.

The new rules provide the framework for China Mobile Corp., the country's No. 1 provider of cell phone services, to contract out the policing and filtering of messages deemed to contain unhealthy or fraudulent contents, reported Xinhua, China's main government-run news agency.

Ten companies have started the policing work in 20 categories of content that are listed in an earlier agreement reached between the government and Internet Service Providers.

In 2003, over 220 billion text messages were sent in China, accounting for some 55 percent of the world's total, the report said.