CHINESE MOBILE phone-users have to register their personal details to buy a SIM card under a new government rule, which Beijing says will crack down on spam and porn but which some see as an invasion of privacy.
Under new rules from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which come into force this week, residents buying numbers for mobile phones must now show their ID cards – and foreigners must produce their passports – with buyers limited to a maximum of 18 numbers.
SIM cards can be bought for about €5, with numbers which repeat the digit four, pronounced si in Mandarin, a similar sound to the word for death, going cheap. Phone numbers repeating the lucky number eight fetch higher prices.
Chinese mobile phone-users routinely buy pre-paid SIM cards when travelling to other cities to avoid roaming charges, and some consumers have complained about the hassle involved.
The move has been in discussion for a long time. Many other places, such as Germany, Australia, Singapore and self-ruled Taiwan, have similar rules.
However, there have been some remarkably public criticisms of the move by those who say it makes it easier for authorities to track dissenters or even sell personal information to spammers and other unscrupulous businesses.
Spam is a problem, with a wave of daily messages offering all kinds of services. Phone-users receive an average 43 text messages every week, about 12 of them spam, according to a government centre quoted in the China Daily.
"Now that the system of authenticating names for mobile phones is being enforced, the related measures for protecting citizens' privacy cannot be delayed," ran a commentary in the China Economic Times.
Street newspaper stands will also be banned from selling SIM cards until owners are trained on how to register customers.
China had 814 million mobile phone-users at the end of July, according to official data, of whom 320 million have not provided identification. China’s big telecom operators said they would follow the new rules.