Tencent closes 20 mln prostitution accounts on WeChat

China's internet giant Tencent has cracked down on about 20 million prostitution-related WeChat accounts in the first half of the year, Xinhua news agency said yesterday.

In an action code named "Thunder Strike," Tencent closed about 20 million accounts that offered prostitution services, and about 30,000 accounts that sold counterfeit products.

Zhu Jinsong, secretary-general of Tencent's Internet crime research center, said it hopes to build a multilateral platform through the Thunder Strike action to crack down on illegal businesses on the Internet and protect the interests of web users.

Scams via online shopping and chatting, and theft of personal information and assets have constituted a large-scale industrial chain on the Internet, Zhu said.

Tencent also released details of several types of Internet scams that will most likely compromise netizens in the second half of the year. These include phishing websites to attract betting on the soccer World Cup, scammers pretending to be partners of professional company accountants to lure them to pay money into their accounts, and fake links in the guise of sample goods or private photos in some shopping and dating websites.