Chinese netizens lose 14 bln U.S. dollars in spam campaigns

Chinese Internet users lost 91.5 billion yuan (13.93 billion U.S. dollars) due to online spam and leakage of personal information in the past year.

It means each Internet user lost about 133 yuan on average from July 1 last year to the first half this year. Nine percent lost more than 1,000 yuan each, according to the Internet Society of China on Thursday.

Each netizen spent an average of 3.6 hours dealing with spam and personal information theft, according to the society, whose membership covers China's major Internet service providers and telecommunications operators.

A netizen on average received 18.9 junk emails, 20.6 junk messages and 21.3 spam telephone every week in the first half year, spam telephone calls irked the public the most, said Hao Zhichao, deputy head of the 12,321 malicious and spam message complaints center, which was set up by the society.

About 76 percent of netizens received information on "prizes," which tried to direct them to fake websites masquerading as banks, Internet firms and TV stations, and they also received fake information from the "police" or "social security," it said.

Such schemes trapped 37 percent of netizens, it said.

The society advised people to be careful when giving information to websites or institutions and avoid leaving too much individual information online. They are advised not to download unidentified software.

China had an online population of 688 million at the end of 2015, about half of the total population, according to the China Internet Network Information Center. Endi