Internet firm Tencent Holdings Ltd. warned smartphone users on Tuesday, Sept. 15, to avoid telecom frauds involving use of personal information stolen from smartphones as cases are rising steadily in the country, the China Daily reported.
Investigators said that the sudden outbreak of tech-related crimes was due to the network of illegal mobile signal sender/blockers in big cities, known as pseudo-base stations.
Tencent, which is monitoring online crimes to help the police, said that there are more than 11 million smartphones infected by mobile viruses sent from the pseudo-base stations in the first six months of the year.
Zhu Jinsong, head of the company's information security control unit, said that since the beginning of the year, the number of infections has increased rapidly.
"About 1.7 million smartphones were infected in February and the number rose to 2 million in June. That is a terrifying trend," Zhu said.
According to the report, the fraudsters, through the fake base stations, send short messages using phone numbers of close friends, family members or service hotlines belonging to telecom carriers or other institutions such as banks. As the user opens the links on the messages, hackers install a software on the device to monitor every move of the smartphone owner, including getting access to passwords for bank cards.
The experts said that major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen in Guangdong Province were the areas worst hit by telecom frauds.
Chen Dongfang, a detective in Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau's anti-online fraud unit, said that cyber fraud cases involving a phishing site increased nearly 10 times in the first eight months of the year compared to last year.
"Fraudsters hide the pseudo-base stations in vans and drive them around the city. This makes it difficult to track them," Chen said.
Yang Ankang, a Shenzhen-based veteran police officer, said that the fraudsters were mostly youngsters born after the 1990s, who have built a sophisticated network nationwide.
"They find their partners online and each one of them handles different activities like sending messages, transferring money out of victims' accounts and money laundering," Yang said.
The report said that Chinese regulators have vowed to crack down on the illegal base stations as the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said it is working with telecom carriers to uncover the identity of the fraudsters.