China directs IT firms to correct or shutdown online storage services for having obscene content

BEIJING: China has ordered its top IT companies, including leading search engine Baidu and social media giant Sina, to correct or shut down their online storage services for spreading pornography.
The National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications last month joined hands with the Ministry of Public Security and Internet and media regulators in a latest campaign to crack down on pornographic content on online storage services.
Suspects have been found storing tens of thousands of pornographic videos on online storage spaces, and selling these accounts on e-commerce platforms such as taobao.com, the office told the state-run Xinhua news agency.

The cloud drives were provided by various online storage or video streaming services including Sina, Baidu and 115.com.

Beijing-based Sina was fined and ordered to shut down its online publishing services on May 3, whereas Baidu was fined on May 6 for providing online storage services that were used for sexual content.

Another report released yesterday on the security of Chinese mobile Internet showed that three quarters of the apps that have been reported as inappropriate to a Ministry of Industry and Information Technology hotline contained sexual content, state-run Global Times reported.

A report on the mobile Internet development that was jointly released by 'The Internet Society of China and the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Centre of China NGOs' said that 75 per cent of the 200,684 reports on mobile apps were related to sexual content, chinanews.com reported yesterday.

In 2015, 235 apps were shut down by the reporting centre for having sexual content.