They are the scourge of cell phone users everywhere and it is no wonder. It is estimated that nearly one hundred billion spam messages were sent in 2011, people.com.cn reported Monday.

More than 10 billion were intercepted by the security software 360 mobile phone guard for 70 million users. It's estimated that 100 billion spam messages harassed China's one billion mobile phone users in the past year.

On average cell phone users receive 11.4 unwanted messages each week, with 22.6 percent of the total messages sent in the later half of 2011, according to a survey released by Internet Society of China.

Among them, fraudulent messages top the list. Some 65.2 percent of mobile phone users received false messages saying they had won a prize; 47.1 percent received messages promoting fake bills and 46.6 percent received messages pretending to be from the bank.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a notice on March 27 launching a three month campaign to screen group delivery services that send spam messages and demanded mobile phone operators strengthen filtering systems.