SHAH ALAM, July 9 — Digital literacy among parents should be empowered to prevent children’s pictures or identities from being exposed to cyber crimes, said Malaysia Cyber Consumer Association (MCCA) president Siraj Jalil.
He added that parents are the first line of defence for families against virtual exploitation, so they must be exposed to technological and digital safety know-hows.
He said that in today’s social media culture, parents share much about their lives, including their daily activities, careers, achievements, and families.
“We as people are used to seeing this content … but if criminals see them, they see chances (to exploit) children. Plus we wouldn’t even know if our content is stolen (or) accessed by someone else.
“Parents themselves play a role. Digital literacy must be (empowered). The government must advocate with various parties so parents are aware. Hold talks.
“If parents don’t take this matter seriously, it leads to an imbalance. (If) there’s no effort, no encouragement for parents to understand contexts, cyber crime will become rampant,” he told Media Selangor.
Malaysia Cyber Consumer Association (MCCA) president Siraj Jalil. — Picture by SIRAJ JALIL
Siraj, who is also a National Consumer Advisory Council (NCAC) member, said preventing cyber crime is the responsibility of all quarters, with the government already having passed the Cybercrimes Bill 2026 to curb the issue.
“Governments, policymakers, policies (have started to recognise) this issue. A social media ban for under-16s has been activated. Literacy (programmes) for school and university students have been conducted.
“But if the people, especially parents themselves, don’t care, don’t take appropriate action, and still share their children’s activities (online), our efforts won’t succeed.
“Parents are children’s first line of defence,” Siraj said.
Last week, the National Crime Agency (NCA) reminded parents to be more careful about uploading pictures of their children online as they could be used for the AI generation of child sexual abuse material.
The NCA and Internet Watchdog Foundation issued guidelines to protect children from the rise in AI-generated sexual abuse material, as part of their new online safety campaign targeting parents and guardians.
The guidelines were issued after a school in Britain was targeted by a crime group, which used publicly available pictures of students to produce sexual images of the children with AI and threatened to publish those images if ransom wasn’t paid.
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