Communications and Information Technology Commission processes more than 900,000 blocking requests for violating links by the end of 2016

The Communications and Information Technology Commission announced today that it processed more than 900,000 violating internet links during 2016, of which 68% were blocked, 92% of which were pornographic, while the number of child abuse links processed exceeded 1,300 links.

It is worth noting that the Commission effectively contributes to supporting efforts to combat pornography and child exploitation online and through technology means, by blocking content that abuses children, and promptly reporting it to relevant security agencies and concerned international organizations. The Commission added that during 2016, it responded to more than six thousand filtering-related inquiries via email, and was also able to process more than (52 thousand) links by communicating with a number of major internet content providers to combat the publication of pornographic material or prevent internet users in the Kingdom from accessing it.

As part of contributing to protecting children and adolescents from internet risks and activating the family's role in limiting their exposure to harmful content on the internet, the Commission indicated that it is currently preparing the first draft of the regulatory framework to support the provision of parental control tools for internet users in the Kingdom, and in parallel is working with service providers to complete the activation of safe search on the most prominent search engines during the first quarter of 2017.

The Commission explained that its continuous efforts to develop the national filtering system have resulted in a number of positive results, including the continued difficulty of accessing open pornographic domains through search engines, a noticeable decrease in pornography search results on a number of prominent social media sites, and a decrease in the number of pornographic applications on various smart device stores.

The Commission concluded its statement by inviting all internet users in the Kingdom to report pornographic sites and child pornography through the website (internet.السعودية) or the filtering application on smart devices, which was recently launched.

It is noted that the Commission has processed more than 5.5 million internet links since 2008, with the blocked pornographic links representing 91.4% of them.