Deputy communications and digital minister Teo Nie Ching said there were also 546 cases related to disseminating offensive content, followed by false content (574), threatening and lewd content (74) and inappropriate content (seven).

“A total of 108 cases are still under investigation, 115 cases have been prosecuted, 40 cases saw the perpetrators compounded with fines totalling RM138,250 and 84 cases saw warnings being given.

“All these cases were investigated under Section 233(1) of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 (Act 588),” she said when replying to a question from Syahredzan Johan (PH-Bangi).

Teo said that of the total number of complaints received, 2,478 cases were classified as No Further Action (NFA) and/or No Offence Disclosed (NOD) as there was no solid evidence linking the suspects to the offence investigated under this section.

Teo added that of the 115 cases prosecuted in court, 105 cases had been disposed of while seven were still in trial.

Responding to a supplementary question from Ismi Mat Taib (PN-Parit), she said social media platform providers have also set up filters to ensure that content with such elements was not uploaded.

“We will also liaise with them to ensure that the content is deleted. We are also working with telecommunications companies to ensure that content of a dubious nature is not sent,” she said.

She added that 518 million dubious SMS text messages were blocked from 2021 to 2022 because they were not only obscene but also contained other elements such as fraud.

“We have blocked many more phone numbers because we suspect they have been abused,” she said.