Cyber Crime on the Rise in Mexico City Marisela Ortiz - The News
go to original February 15, 2014

MEXICO CITY – The cyber crime division of the Mexico City Public Security Secretariat (SSP) reports that it has received 1,321 reports of cybercrimes over the last 10 months alone, with slander, identity theft and threats among the most common.

According to SSP Information Executive Director Miguel Ángel Zamora Piña, the cybercrime division has also shut down 80 child pornography websites over the same period of time — the majority of them internationally based, athough five appear to have been based in Mexico.

Zamora Piña said that there are more than 5 million Internet users in Mexico City, of whom 33 percent are between 12 and 17 years old. Younger users, he said, are vulnerable to predators.

He said that in the case of child pornography, the content uploader isn’t always the problem, explaining that many teenagers now take what he said were sexually provocative photos of themselves, which they then upload to social networks.

Unfortunately, he added, these young people do not take security measures to protect their information or to ensure that these photos don’t fall into the hands of people they don’t know, and many of these photos end up on websites advertising images of “fifteen year old girls” or “girls of Mexico City middle schools,” which are then considered to be child pornography.

Zamora Piña said that in the latter case, the cybercrime division immediately takes action to close these websites to inhibit the further spread of the images.

He added that the SSP will launch a campaign in 400 public and private middle schools across Mexico City to inform teenagers on how to protect themselves online.

Mexico City Deputy Dinorah Pizano, a member of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), said that the Mexico City Congress will collaborate with the SSP in the coming months to draft a law that will establish stricter penalties for internet service providers hosting criminal websites.

“The cybercrime police can’t do it all, they need the support of the Mexico City Government and Congress and the Chamber of Deputies to eradicate this problem,” Pizano said.

She said that the government will be careful when dealing with personal information and when touching upon the issue of free expression, adding that internet service providers must become more responsive to the problem of cybercrime.

See the original at The News

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!