Tencent cracks down cyber crime

Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd helped police crack down on 200 groups involved in cyberspace fraud and extortion over the past year.

Shenzhen-based Tencent said on Tuesday there were new trends in online crimes in 2014.

Those conducting online crimes are no longer mainly individuals with more working together to make financial gains by hacking into website databases and stealing the personal information of netizens.

About 200 million cell phones in China had been hit with viruses whereas in 2013 the number was less than 100 million. Sending short messages to lure cell phone users to download software containing viruses was the most used tactic last year.

Tencent also said that with more databases being hacked, increased personal information is leaked. Those engaged in cyber crimes pretend to be friends or family members of their targets.

According to the report, most of those carrying out cyber crimes are in China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and Guangdong, Hainan and Fujian provinces.