The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has taken action against 4,358 fake accounts from January last year until February this year, the Dewan Negara was told today.

Communications and Multimedia Minister Salleh Said Keruak said 80 percent of these fake accounts had been deleted by social media platform providers such as Facebook and Twitter for violating the terms and conditions set by their respective service providers.

He said MCMC had also blocked 40 websites, portals and blogs that disseminated fake news and information.

"From January 2017 until February 2018, a total of 45 investigation papers were opened by MCMC for these cases, involving the spread of fake news on various social media platforms, with four cases being brought to court,” he said.

He was replying to a question from Senator Khairudin Samad during the question-and-answer session at the Dewan Negara sitting, concerning the government’s plan to tackle issues related to the spread of fake news and information, that was currently widespread.

Salleh said based on the analysis conducted by MCMC, the majority of Malaysians received unreliable or fake news from WhatsApp, which accounted for 84 percent, followed by Facebook (eight percent), blogs (four percent) and others (four percent).

He said the ministry, through MCMC, would continue to strengthen efforts on enforcement, investigations and prosecution of any misconduct on the social media and internet generally, via the Special Committee on Cyber Crime, comprising various ministries and agencies.

On the Sebenarnya.my portal, he said it had received positive public feedback based on the number of hits that had reached 25 million so far, with an average of nearly two million hits per month since its launch on March 14 last year.

“An analysis carried out through the Sebenarnya.my portal revealed that there was an average increase of 10 percent for every quarter of the year in the total number of its hits.

“This rise has given a positive indication of an increase in public awareness among Malaysians in the practice of checking, analysing and verifying of news that they received,” he added.

-- Bernama