THE government takes a serious view of online threats against children, said Deputy Prime Minister Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail.

Dr Wan Azizah, who also holds the women, family and community development portfolio, cited pornography, “child grooming” and “sexting” as especially worrisome.

According to the 2015 DiGi CyberSAFE study, one in four kids was likely to meet up with strangers whom they met online, she said at the launch of the Malaysian edition of the 2020 Safer Internet Day in Putrajaya today.

Present were Deputy Communications and Multimedia Minister Eddin Syazlee Shith and Secretary-General Suriani Ahmad.

Dr Wan Azizah said the 2018 Internet Users Survey showed that 70% of parents limited their children’s internet use or sat near them when they went online.

However, only 12.2% opted to activate the “parental control option”, while 7.4% “did nothing at all”, she said.

She added that there are parents who use gadgets as “cyber nannies” to “control” their kids.

In efforts to protect children, said Dr Wan Azizah, telecommunications companies have been roped in to stop the spread of child pornography.

“The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission standard operating procedure for all telcos will be further streamlined to strengthen law enforcement, particularly (with regard to) sexual crimes against children.”

An agreement has been reached between Putrajaya and Facebook representatives to enhance collaboration with enforcement agencies, to take down inappropriate and illegal content from the social networking site, she said.

At the event, she launched Mendidik Anak-Anak Digital, a book published by CyberSecurity Malaysia on educating children about staying safe online.

Dr Wan Azizah said the government, via the Communications and Multimedia Ministry, is actively addressing cybercrime, including by strengthening the related infrastructure and regulating the multimedia ecosystem in Malaysia.

On cyber threats, she said they include the spreading of fake news and inciting racial and religious sentiments on the internet.

“Cybercrime, cyber violence and cyber warfare have had a huge impact on the physical world, and this could endanger national harmony and security.

“Social media sites have become the platform (of choice) for cyber criminals as they have no restrictions in terms of information-sharing… (This results in) users being exposed to various threats, such as fraud, bullying, identity theft and others.”

According to a Cyber999 statistics report by the Malaysian Computer Emergency Response Team, 10,722 cybersecurity incidents were reported last year, up from 10,699 in 2018.

The top five cases were fraud, intrusion, malicious code, content related and harassment, said Dr Wan Azizah.

“We need to be on the alert when we receive through email, SMS and so forth offers that are too good to be true, as they are most likely scams.”

On cybercrimes, she said Commercial Crime Investigation Department statistics showed that 11,875 investigation papers on such cases were opened last year, an increase from 2018’s 10,753.

“The total losses incurred due to cybercrimes increased 24.9% to RM497.7 million in 2019 from RM398.6 million the previous year.” – Bernama, February 11, 2020.