BEIJING, April 29 (Xinhua) -- About 353.8 billion junk text messages were sent in China in 2007, up 92.7 percent year-on-year, the anti-spam committee of the China Internet Association said on Tuesday.

    Illegal and fraudulent messages accounted for 49.7 percent, while ads made up 45.48 percent.

    Group spam companies accounted for 36.67 percent of the total, service provider firms made up 32.18 percent and net operators 20.75 percent.

    At the end of 2007, China's cell-phone users topped 500 million.