2020: South Korea prohibited people to download anonymous messengers up to 18 years
In the middle of May, 2020 it became known that in South Korea to teenagers up to 18 years prohibited to download anonymous messengers which do not identify the user and do not save chat history. The series of loud sexual crimes became the reason.
The ministry of questions of gender equality and family stated that it considers the similar applications providing anonymous free online chats, "harmful to youth". According to the plan of the government, minors will be able to use online applications for chats only if these messengers have the technical functions allowing to identify the user, to save a talk and to announce illegal actions.
Such decision of the authorities is caused by recent scandal. The police revealed a group of persons which blackmail forced through a chat in the Telegram messenger of women and minors to participation in creation of pornographic materials. At least tens of women and more than 15 teenagers suffered from actions of malefactors. About 260 thousand people transferred to criminals money as a payment for connection to Telegram channel with a pornography.
According to data of the ministry, only 13.3% from 346 messengers available in South Korea require identification of users. From the total number of 72.8% offer services of backup and 55.8% - reports.
 | Applications for anonymous correspondence are widely used for commission of sexual crimes in a digital field with participation of minors, - explained in the ministry. - We intend to create safer online environment for our teenagers. |  |
The ministry stated that appointment will become effective in the second half of 2020 after assessment of opinions of citizens. The three-months grace period will be provided to operators of applications for adaptation to new requirements.[1]
Notes
| The site content is translated by machine translation software powered by PROMT. The machine-translated articles are not always perfect and may contain errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. Read original article If you find inaccuracies or errors in the results of machine translation, please write to editor@tadviser.ru. We will make every effort to correct them as soon as possible. |