After Tencent announced plans to block Caihong QQ, which was originally rumored to be related to the Chinese social networking site 51.com, the Chinese SNS website admitted that the software was owned by 51.com, but it announced at the same time that Caihong QQ is a legal instant messaging assistant software.

A few days ago, Tencent said it would launch several measures to block all illegally installed functions and spyware from its own QQ instant messaging software in China. The action mainly targets Caihong QQ's functions like showing of users' IP addresses and showing whether a user is in an invisible state.

Reacting to Tencent's action, 51.com has published a notice, which states Caihong QQ, which is owned by 51.com, is legal instant messaging assistant software and Tencent does not have the right to identify it as illegal software. It says that Tencent's statement, which describes Caihong QQ as similar software to the Worm.Zotob virus and leads to the security risk of leak of users' information, is untrue.

Commenting on the 51.com notice, Tencent says the company will try every means to fight illegal spyware and to protect the privacy and information security of its users. In addition, Tencent says it cannot be ruled out that the company may settle the problem through legal means.