Police, MCMC, AGC to collaborate against cyber crimes, says Fahmi

ENFORCEMENT authorities will collaborate and take immediate action against cyber crimes committed on social media platforms, said Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil.

“This is necessary due to the huge losses suffered from online scams, including abuse of social media platforms by cyber bullies and paedophiles,” he told a press conference in Putrajaya today.

He said the cabinet decided that police, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and the Attorney-General’s Chambers work together.

“They will scrutinise relevant issues and decide on actions to strengthen and streamline aspects about investigations and prosecution of online and cyber crimes.

“Cybercrimes, such as online scams, cyberbullying and sexual harassment will leave a deep impact on the victims and this is among the reasons why we made this decision,” he said.

For the first six months of the year, he said losses from online scams where criminals used Facebook to cheat Malaysians of their savings were estimated to be between RM8 million and RM132 million.

He said MCMC’s monitoring also found that each platform has a different level of compliance with Malaysian laws, with some being prompt and compliant, some not complying at all, and some very late in responding to the authorities.

“Facebook’s parent company Meta had a very high compliance rate for their platforms, with 85% (Facebook), Instagram at 88%, and WhatsApp at 79%,” he said.

However, the compliance rate of social media platforms such as TikTok, Telegram and X, formerly Twitter, was still below par.

Tiktok had a compliance rate of 76%, Telegram (63%) and X (25%).

“Each of these platforms also has cybercrime issues and harmful content.

“Among the harmful and fraudulent content found on Facebook are online gambling and harmful artificial intelligence (AI), TikTok (cyberbullying, fake accounts, 3R (religion, royalty and race), Telegram (3R, online gambling, pirated movies, child pornography) and X (3R, cyberbullying and sexual grooming of children),” he added. – July 24, 2024