Consumer-rights site shut down for blackmail

Consumer-rights site shut down for blackmail

• Source: Global Times
• [08:46 March 24 2011]
• Comments

By Xu Tianran

A consumer-rights protection website involved in a blackmailing scandal was shut down Wednesday by city authorities.

The site 315ts.net was established by the China Electronics Chamber of Commerce in April 2005, and is named for World Consumer Rights Day, which falls on March 15.

The website was supposed to be a place where Web users could express their dissatisfaction when they felt their rights as consumers had been infringed upon by producers and vendors of electronic products.

However, according to a public notice issued Tuesday by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, 315ts.net was being used as a tool for illegal gain.

When users would post negative reviews about certain companies, website managers would then blackmail those companies. Depending on how much money the website received from them, 315ts.net would manipulate its complaint threads in the favor of the blackmailed companies, according to the public notice.

An anonymous employee of the Beijing Internet Management Office confirmed media reports that the management office had shut down the website Wednesday.

"We closed the website for rectification under the order of our supervisor, the Ministry of Civil Affairs," an employee of the website's publicity office surnamed Lin said, implying that they were compliant in closing the website.

Lin was not sure when the website will be reopened and declined to say anything more without an interview outline, which received no response.

According to the ministry's public notice, the website should be rectified immediately and its operators punished.

The China Electronics Chamber of Commerce also received a warning as an administrative penalty. The chamber refused to comment Wednesday.