Hundreds of people receive same spam message

Hundreds of people in Chengdu, Sichuan province, received an explicit cellphone text message around 2 pm on Monday, Chengdu Economic Daily reported.

Residents, shopkeepers, doctors, nurses, patients and their family members who were at the crossroads of Jianshen Road South and Peihua Road East in downtown Chengdu received the same curse message.

The receiving date of the message was Tuesday, and almost all of the recipients were China Mobile subscribers. The message was from a cellphone in Ya’an, Sichuan province.

The owner of the cellphone, a man in Tongshan county in Hubei province doing business in Ya’an, said he had received more than 200 messages and numerous calls asking why he sent the rude message. He suspects that his cellphone number was stolen.

The Chengdu Branch of China Mobile said that this might be another case of using a “pseudo base station” to send mass spam messages.

A “pseudo base station” can intercept a cellphone signal, analyze the number and personal information, and send 30,000 to 60,000 spam messages to users within a radius of hundreds of meters in one hour.

The Chengdu branch will send technicians to investigate the case, Chengdu Economic Daily said.