The study showed that while 95 percent of Malaysians worry about their child’s safety online, including more than 60 percent of parents claiming that their children were cyber crime victims, only 48 percent acted on their fears.
The parents grapple with their children suffering from cyber bullying, online predators and privacy concerns, reveals Symantec Asia Pacific (Asia Consumer Business).
The measures taken range from basic steps like only allowing Internet access with parental supervision and checking browser history, to more savvy actions like installing trackers on their children’s devices.
On June 14, The Star reported that mobile chat apps like WeChat and BeeTalk are the main tools for sex predators in Malaysia, based on Bukit Aman’s statistics.
Since 2015, a whopping 80 percent of reported rape cases involved sex predators who preyed on their victims online. And, in June, British pedophile Richard Huckle was given 22 life sentences by a London court for abusing 23 Malaysian and Cambodian babies and children for almost a decade.
Released recently, the global report surveyed 21,302 mobile device users aged 18 and above, including 1,000 Malaysian participants.
CyberSecurity Malaysia (CSM) has urged parents to supervise their children online.
Urging parents to install protection apps and advanced Internet software to control their children’s activities online, the national cybersecurity agency’s Chief Executive Officer Dr. Amirudin Abdul Wahab said these could help filter harmful content, monitor websites the child visits and track their activities online.
These parental control aids could also alert parents if their child tried to access blocked sites, and keep a record of text messages sent and received, he said in an interview.
“It’s useful for parents and their children to agree on some ground rules together,” he said.
From January until June this year, CSM received 16 reports involving children.
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