Ministry to ban sharing, selling of others' telephone numbers

Chinese authorities have released a regulation draft that would forbid any individual or organization to sell, share, or exchange others' telephone numbers collected by any means, according to the State Council Legal Affairs Office website.

Related bodies would also be forbidden to send text messages to such numbers.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) intends to regulate communication and message services, as well as defend the legal interests of users.

According to the draft, anyone providing short message services should obtain a license prior to launching the service. Without permission from receivers, they cannot send messages containing commercial information to customers.

MIIT will launch a center to deal with user reports related to harassment.

In addition, the ministry encourages the development of applications for message security. Uses are also prompted to individually apply such apps to enhance message safety.

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