WeChat, the popular instant messaging service in China, has been the subject of a 3-month crackdown on cyber-crime by police in the Guangdong Province where Tencent (WeChat's parent) is based. Having created a CNY 10 million fund for whistleblowers, the company reports:
- *WECHAT SHUTS 20M PROSTITUTION-RELATED ACCOUNTS: XINHUA
WeChat has over 600 million active users (so there's stillplenty of pr0n we suspect), but we wonder just how much carnage this will do the now hookers-and-blow dominated GDP calculations of the world's major economies [4].
As Xinhua reports,
Tencent, the operator of WeChat, or Weixin, a popular instant messaging service in China, said Wednesday it has shut down 20 million prostitution-related WeChat accounts so far this year.
A three-month-long crackdown on cyber crime was initiated in February by police in south China's Guangdong Province, where Tencent is headquartered. The crackdown targeted online pornography and the spread of viruses on the Internet.
Tencent also closed 30,000 accounts that were selling fake goods on WeChat. Ten million illegal and fake advertisements have been pulled off on a daily basis over the past few months, the statement added.
In support of the campaign, Tencent set up a fund of 10 million yuan (1.6 million U.S. dollars) to encourage the public to report such crimes. So far, 250,000 yuan has been handed out, according to the statement.
WeChat now has over 600 million users, according to Tencent.
Brings a whole new meaning to the term crackdown...
