Asia tries to put SMS genie back in the bottle

KUALA LUMPUR: For Asian governments, text-messaging is no longer a matter of twiddling their thumbs.

Asia is cracking down on a technology that has become a powerful social tool, used to organize mass protests, sow wild rumours, perpetrate crime and, it is feared, trigger bombs.

From Southeast Asia, where authorities say they are motivated by security and public-nuisance concerns, to Greater China, where scams and spam seem to be the major worry, text-messaging by anonymous mobile-phone users has caused a huge, ringing headache.

In the developing countries of Asia, most mobile-phone users are faceless because they use pre-paid phone cards, which can be bought for a few dollars without giving a name and address.

But anxious governments are changing all that.

This month, Malaysia ordered phone companies to register all holders of pre-paid services after text-messaging gossip-mongers hit a raw nerve with false talk that the premier’s ailing wife had died. The rumour grew so large, he felt compelled to deny it.

Text-messaging in Asia has become a rumour mill to be reckoned with, able to turn a shred of misinformation into a national talking point worthy of a government denial.

It is also deemed a security risk.

Thailand moved to register users of pre-paid phones in May, describing it as part of efforts to stop terrorists using mobile phones to set off bombs. Thai security forces have become targets for a campaign of bombings in the country’s mainly Muslim south.

Shanghai, China’s richest city with 20 million people, will require registration of pre-paid users from September to tackle text-message fraud, the Shanghai Daily said at the weekend.

Last year, Taiwan also sought to identify pre-paid phone users, fed up with conmen using the cover of anonymity to separate gullible people from their money with scams ranging from simple credit-card tricks to bogus kidnappings.

One Reuters reporter got a call from a ‘kidnapper’ demanding ransom for her husband — who was sitting right next to her.

“This has become an issue over the last year, particularly in the Asia-Pacific,” said Nick Ingelbrecht, principal analyst on mobile communications for US-based research firm Gartner Group.

“There is a lot happening and the reasons are quite wide-ranging,” he said. “In Japan, there’s a lot of pressure from within the industry to clamp down on pre-paid because it has a criminal side — it’s a way for criminal gangs to communicate.”

Few countries know the power of text-messaging better than the Philippines, where a lightning campaign rallied hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets in 2001 in a ‘people power’ uprising that ousted President Joseph Estrada.

At least 200 million text or SMS messages are sent every day in the Philippines — that’s more than two for every Filipino and earns the country its reputation as the world’s SMS capital.

Any attempt by Manila to limit or control text messaging draws fierce resistance and there are groups dedicated to protecting text messaging rights. A proposal to impose a tax on texting was shelved this year after stiff public opposition.

Filipinos still do not have to give their identities when buying pre-paid phone cards.

“The main attraction of pre-paid in Asia is that these are low-income countries and subscribers want to control their spending,” said Karen Ang, a Bangkok-based telecoms analyst for Citigroup. “But being able to buy a pre-paid card without giving up a lot of information about yourself is also an attraction.”

Pre-paid cards are turning Asia into the fastest-growing telecom market, making up about 60 per cent of users in China and over 90 per cent in Indonesia and the Philippines at end-2004, according to Gartner. In the Asia-Pacific, including Japan, about 53 per cent of the region’s 670 million mobile-phone users are on pre-paid cards, and the proportion is growing, Gartner estimates.

Like the Philippines, Indonesia allows pre-paid cards to be sold without the need to register names and numbers, though text messages have been blamed there for everything from bomb hoaxes to spreading false rumours of imminent disasters.

Jakarta has sometimes felt compelled to deny rumours spread by text messages but Indonesia is shifting to democracy and does not appear to be in a mood to tighten up on their use.

In the spirit of free speech, the Indonesian president even gave out his mobile-phone number in June and invited people to send in complaints. The move backfired as thousands of people responded, crashing the line. His administration then set up a new system with several numbers, and reading a selection of text messages is reportedly part of his regular morning routine.

Indonesia, though, is increasingly the exception.

In Brunei, a tiny Islamic kingdom surrounded by Borneo’s rainforests, text-message madness has frustrated attempts by authorities to come to grips with a few strange outbreaks of hysteria among school pupils during religious studies.

Text-message rumours that a night-time exorcism would be held at one school drew hundreds of onlookers to the scene, prompting police to warn that anyone found spreading malicious gossip by text message could be fined or jailed, the Borneo Bulletin said.

China is also starting to exorcise its text-message demons.

The Shanghai Communications Administration has just ruled that new users of mobile phones must give their real names and copies of their identity cards in an effort to cut down on text-message spam and fraud, the Shanghai Daily said.

In Shanghai, users of pre-paid cards are anonymous. “That has made it difficult for us to pursue short-message criminals,” the daily quoted an unnamed official from the watchdog as saying.

The problem across Asia is ensuring people register their real identities: many are reluctant to give personal details and dealers just want to sell into a booming market-place.

“I think about 80 per cent of people won’t want to give their details,” said Allan, a spiky-haired salesman at a small mobile-phone merchant’s booth in downtown Kuala Lumpur. In any case, he added, he wouldn’t know if identity papers were genuine.

“We are just salesmen, not policemen.”—Reuters