SMS spamming fought by Korean police

Korean police rounded up a total of 38 spammers from 36 companies in a single day, as part of a nationwide clampdown on spammers using mobile phone short text messaging services. According to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, the spam networks sent unsolicited text messages discriminately to mobile phone users with the first digits of 060 in their phone number. In a typical case of illegal spam-messaging, a 40-year-old head of a spam SMS firm, identified by his family name Um, collected a total of 900 million won from September last year till March this year through a phone-sex service. He sent out millions of obscene text messages randomly to mobile phone users to entice them to call back. He charged 500 won per 30 seconds or 10,000 won for 10 minutes once phone users responded to the SMS spam and called back, police said. The police have arrested Um and were seeking arrest warrants for 5 other heads of similar spam networks, while booking 32 others.