How is "harassment" defined legally?

Harassment will not constitute a crime, but if the circumstances are serious, it will violate the "Public Security Administration Punishment Law" and the public security organs have the right to detain or fine you.

Article 42, Paragraph 5 of the "Public Security Administration Punishment Law" stipulates that anyone who repeatedly sends obscene, insulting, threatening or other messages that interferes with the normal life of others shall be detained for not more than five days or fined not more than 500 yuan. ;

If the circumstances are serious, he or she shall be detained for not less than five days but not more than ten days, and may also be fined not more than five hundred yuan. Your behavior is classified as sending other messages. If the frequency is large and interferes with the normal life of others, the other party will report the case to the public security agency and request punishment.

There is no crime of harassment in the criminal law, which means that simple harassment does not violate the criminal law, but threats or blackmail on the phone, for example, may constitute a crime. Nuisance calls can be recorded and the police can be called even if they are not criminal.

Extended information

The high popularity of mobile phones has aggravated harassment, and there are three hurdles to overcome to deal with it

Harassment calls and spam text messages seriously disrupt our daily lives. It’s almost like “everyone shouts for beating”. According to the development of the telecommunications service industry for the whole year and the fourth quarter of 2014 recently announced by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the total number of mobile phone users reached 1.286 billion, and the penetration rate of mobile phone users reached 94.5 units per 100 people. High popularity will undoubtedly increase harassment.

It is urgent to control harassing phone calls and spam text messages, and this requires all parties in the industry chain to form a linkage mechanism. At the same time, users must strengthen their awareness of prevention and control and have the courage to report them. Only in this way can we truly improve our quality and curb the proliferation of harassing and spam calls. Last year, the average number of harassing calls per person was 20.7, and the average number of spam text messages per person was 34.9

When it comes to spam calls and spam text messages, I believe many people will grit their teeth. Indeed, various types of harassing phone calls and text messages, such as selling houses, selling insurance, and winning lottery tickets, are bothering the majority of users, and this situation will tend to intensify.

According to the development of the telecommunications service industry for the whole year and the fourth quarter of 2014 announced by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the total number of mobile phone users reached 1.286 billion, and the penetration rate of mobile phone users reached 94.5 units per 100 people.

Behind the high penetration rate is a worrying reality: the "2014 Harassment Call Annual Report" jointly released by the Beijing Cyberspace Administration and the Capital Internet Association under the guidance of Beijing-area websites and the Sogou Number Channel jointly released In 2014, the number of harassing phone calls nationwide reached 27 billion, equivalent to 20.7 calls per capita.

According to the "2014 Mobile Security Report" recently released by Baidu Mobile Guard, as of December 2014, the number of spam text messages nationwide reached 45.4 billion. This conversion is equivalent to 34.9 items per capita.

27 billion harassing phone calls! 45.4 billion spam text messages! This staggering data reflects the current proliferation of harassing phone calls and spam text messages. Spam text messages are repeatedly banned, harassing phone calls come frequently, and telecommunications fraud takes new forms, causing users to suffer greatly.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Public Security, the average annual growth rate of telecom fraud has been as high as over 70% in recent years, and the public losses caused by telecom fraud exceed 10 billion yuan every year.

In fact, harassing phone calls are also a nationwide management problem. Taking police calls as an example, the 110 police service platform in Xinxiang City, Henan Province received 1.3 million police calls last year, and there were as many as 250,000 harassment calls, which was a serious waste of limited police resources.

Coincidentally, data from the command center of the Yunnan Provincial Public Security Department show that in 2014, more than 7 million people in the province dialed 110, but harassment calls accounted for half of the calls received by the police. According to other statistics, the 119 command center of the Yinchuan Fire Brigade received an average of nearly 300 calls every day last year, of which harassment calls and false alarms accounted for about 85%.

Lagging legislation makes it difficult to eradicate harassing phone calls and spam text messages

The proliferation of harassing phone calls and spam text messages calls for strict control, but why do harassing calls and spam calls always persist? What about "Wildfire never burns out, but the spring breeze blows and rekindles it"?

First, legislation lags behind. The "Decision on Strengthening Network Information Protection" promulgated by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on December 28, 2012 clearly stipulates that no commercial information shall be sent without permission or confirmation from the consumer, or explicit rejection by the consumer.

If this happens, consumers can request the telecommunications service department to delete relevant information or require necessary measures to be taken. “However, these ‘necessary measures’ are currently not detailed,” said Hu Gang, secretary-general of the Internet Society of China Research Center. In addition, the law does not provide specific provisions on the screening, punishment and compensation standards for harassing phone calls and spam text messages.

Secondly, the proliferation of number-changing software has made it more difficult for interception software to block harassing calls and spam text messages. At present, many criminals take advantage of the high credibility of special numbers among the public and use 400, 110 and other numbers one after another to commit fraud, making it difficult for the public to guard against them.

Thirdly, there are loopholes in information collection and storage, which has also formed an illegal profit chain. Some netizens joked: "People who sell you are everywhere: when you buy a house, the real estate company sells you; when your child is born, the hospital sells you; when your child goes to school, the school sells you;

Moving in The community is over, and the property management department has sold you again..." In life, everything from small questionnaires on the street, casually discarded express package slips, website registration information, to some government information registrations may become numbers used by criminals to harass users. source.

Fourth, high dispersion. With the high penetration rate of mobile phones, it is not easy to quickly and accurately find the source of the call. "These fraud gangs are generally in other provinces or overseas, and the numbers used have been technically processed. Most of the fraud websites are set up abroad. After the incident, it caused great difficulty and resistance to the investigation of the case."

< p>A police officer who has investigated communications fraud cases said so. The Public Security Bureau of Zhengzhou City, Henan Province even stated that because telephone fraud is a non-contact remote fraud, the detection rate is often less than 1%.

Treatment of harassing phone calls and spam text messages must pass three levels

Harassing phone calls and spam text messages seriously affect the daily life of the public, and it is time to take good care of them. To effectively control harassing phone calls and spam text messages, all parties in the industry chain need to form a linkage mechanism and control the three levels of management, technology, and awareness.

First of all, we need to take the lead in management. Lagging legislation is the main reason for the proliferation of harassing phone calls and spam text messages. In the next work, relevant departments must improve the legal system and establish a unified national reporting platform. For example, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce recently issued the "Work Plan for the Special Action to Control Telephone "Black Cards"". The implementation of the real-name system will have a certain curbing effect on this phenomenon.

Relevant departments should promptly clarify the definition of harassing phone calls and spam text messages, and make detailed provisions on punishment, so that all parties in the industry chain have laws to abide by, must abide by laws, and be punished for violations.

Secondly, technical governance is indispensable. Industry insiders suggest that operators should continue to improve their number management capabilities and improve technical means to combat harassment calls. In view of the widespread use of number-changing software, relevant security manufacturers must strengthen research and development and increase interception efforts and accuracy.

Finally, users should strengthen their awareness of prevention and control. According to Sogou’s online survey data, the public’s most commonly used methods to prevent harassing calls are to set up blacklists and install mobile phone interception software, but the proportion of reports and complaints is relatively small. Yang Hongtao, vice president of Sogou, said that the public only expresses a willingness and lacks practical actions. The awareness of mass prevention and control still needs to be strengthened.

Similarly, the management of spam text messages cannot be separated from the cooperation of users. In order to protect the security of their information and property from infringement, users must have the courage to unite the regulatory authorities, operators, security vendors and mobile phone users to eradicate the black industrial chain of harassing calls and spam text messages and restore the integrity of the network. Clear sky.

Baidu Encyclopedia - Public Security Administration Punishment Law of the People's Republic of China

China News Network - The high popularity of mobile phones has aggravated harassment, and three hurdles must be crossed to control chaos