Hard to block gambling websites legal in neighbouring countries: minister
Digital Economy and Society Minister Chaiwut Thanakamanusorn said it would be difficult for Thai authorities to block access to gambling websites because they are legal in neighbouring countries.
After holding the first meeting of the national committee in charge of prevention and suppression of online crimes on Monday, Chaiwut said a lot of Thais have turned to use services of gambling websites opened in neighbouring countries, causing huge damage to the Thai economy.
He said the meeting agreed that there must be better ways to prevent access to such websites.
The meeting also discussed that pornography and human trafficking have become more rampant online, hence the committee saw the need to step up efforts to suppress online pornography and human trafficking.
The meeting resolved to have representatives from agencies in charge of suppression of human trafficking to sit on the committee, Chaiwut added.
The committee also acknowledged key statistics in suppression of online crimes during the past year:
• Arrest of 166 suspects in crackdowns on call-centre gangs in eight countries
• Blocking 118,530 telephone lines used for making fraudulent calls and sending SMS messages
• Freezing 58,463 bank accounts used by call-centre gangs and closing of eight social network groups who opened bank accounts for use by gangs
• 673 suspects arrested in 657 fraudulent online fund-raising cases
• 461 suspects arrested in 318 online gambling cases and 1,830 gambling websites blocked
• 270 suspects arrested in 263 fraudulent cases of online sales
Chaiwut said the meeting also acknowledged operations to block illegal websites during the past year:
• 4,035 URLs of lese majeste websites
• 1,830 URLs of gambling websites
• 35 URLs of pornography websites
• 76 URLs of websites or pages selling e-cigarettes
• 24 URLs of websites or pages selling lottery
• 24 URLs of websites selling medicine.
