Public tip-offs lead China's online crackdown

Nearly 12,000 tip-offs received by China's network authorities in February resulted in the blacklisting of search keywords and online accounts.

More than half of the 11,796 complaints received by the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center involved lewd content while the rest concerned online extortion and paid post deletions, gambling and terrorism, according to a statement released on Saturday by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC).

In addition to curbing pornographic content, the CAC's ongoing crackdown also focused on websites that used the threat of negative coverage to extort enterprises and individuals.

In total, the center identified 2,742 links to pornographic pages or files, 60 keywords and 1,252 online rumors.

The owners of 62 online accounts were also punished for spreading lewd content or rumors, the statement said, without specifying the punishment.

According to the CAC, it distributed 777,000 yuan (124,200 U.S. dollars) to 135 whistleblowers for information that aided the investigation in key cases this year.