CYBERJAYA : Fake news keeps haunting Malaysians

CYBERJAYA: Fraud through the Internet including fake news continues to haunt Malaysians as more and more people falling into the trap of cybercrime since 2016.

CyberSecurity Malaysia (CSM) through its official complaints centre Cyber999 has divided the reports on cybercrime into nine categories, namely content-related, cyber harassment, denial of service, fraud, intrusion, intrusion attempt, malicious code, spam and vulnerabilities.

Out of 2,977 reported incidents from January to April this year, cyber fraud recorded the highest number of incidents with 1,963 cases followed by malicious code (390), intrusion (339), content-related (100), cyber harassment (88), spam (37), intrusion attempt (34), vulnerabilities (21) and denial of service (five).

.

.
– SPACE RESERVE FOR YOUR ADVERTISEMENT –

.

Compared to last year, throughout 2018, the highest reports received was cyber fraud with 5,123 cases followed by intrusion attempt (1,805) and malicious code (1,700).

In the meantime, statistics from Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) showed that up to December 2018, Malaysia had 28.7 million Internet users, which accounted for 87.4% of the country’s population.

That was an increase of 4.2 million users in comparison with 24.5 million users recorded in 2016.

On daily basis, a total of 39.2% users spend between one to four hours surfing the Internet, 23.9% surf it between five and eight hours, 13.4% use it nine to 12 hours while 8.1% users surf the internet over 18 hours.

.

ADS by Cloud 9:
.
– SPACE RESERVE FOR YOUR ADVERTISEMENT –
.

.

Fake news

CSM chief executive officer Datuk Dr Amirudin Abdul Wahab said among Internet fraudulent activities were the dissemination of fake news, impersonation and offering non-existent services.

“News, reports, audio and video recordings that are either completely or partially false have been disseminated, sensationalised by certain parties to ‘discredit’ certain individual or organisations. Sometimes to gain money,” he told Bernama.

The nature of the Internet that is capable of disseminating information at high speed and allows users to use the service with a made-up identity is among the reasons how fraud and fake news dissemination can be done easily. While users’ who are ignorant of the transparency of the information received makes the matter worse.

Amirudin also said the Edelman Trust Barometer 2018 report revealed that 73% of Internet users in Malaysia were concerned about the negative impact of fake news, but at the same time, 45% of the internet users chose to disengage from the main news channels for their news source.

They choose to refer to sources shared on social sites which raise the risk for them to be exposed easily to fake news.

“To make it worse, 63% of Malaysians could not distinguish between rumours and good journalism,” he explained.

.

.
– SPACE RESERVE FOR YOUR ADVERTISEMENT –

.

Given that the netizens are unable to distinguish between true and fake news, they usually simply accept the news without checking their validity.

Meanwhile, a study by an international organisation, Ipsos, based in Paris revealed that 50% of Malaysians admit they have discovered stories to be fake after they believed them to be true.

“Every fake news has a big impact on the perception and the reputation of those involved in the news. Worse still, when issues on racism, religion and other sensitive issues are misused because it not only affects individuals but also threatens the sovereignty of the nation,” Amirudin said.

While true facts can be published to deny the fake news but the damage from the negative perception could not be easily deleted in a short time frame, he added.

..

ADS by Cloud 9:
.
– SPACE RESERVE FOR YOUR ADVERTISEMENT –
.

.