Global efforts aim to rid net of terror

International cooperation, particularly among internetbased firms, is key to ridding online social media of terrorists and their nefarious information, experts said at the thirdWorld Internet Conference on Thursday.

Social media has become a “new haven and tool” for terrorist organizations to spread harmful information as well as recruit, train and organize attacks, said Wang Yong, a professor at the People’s Public Security University of China.

Agreed Li Wei, director of the Institute for Security and Arms Control Studies under the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations. Terrorists are no longer mad men hiding in caves — they know how to take advantage of social media, he said.

“Terror-related information circulating on social media poses a big threat to the cybersecurity ofChina,” Li said.

China has 710 million internet users, and more than 656 million users access the internet via mobile phones, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.

“The rapidly increasing access to the internet means more people also have access to social media,” Li said. With so many people trawling the internet using cellular phones, illegal information can spread quickly across social platforms and handheld devices, making it harder to track down the culprits, he said.

Jia Yu, a professor at the NorthwestUniversity of Politics and Law, said online terrorist communities have learned to use proxy, encryption and cloud databases to cover their activities.

“Terrorists can post a video link from a cloud storage to a password-protected social media chat room without leaving physical Jia said.

Online interactions like these typically leave traces of metadata, so it requires cooperation between governments and (social media) platform providers to mine the evidence out of big data, he said.

China has increased efforts to fight use of online media for terror-related activities in the past fewyears.

By the end of March, the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center had received some 20,000 terrorism-related complaints. evidence,”

number of internet users who access the net via their smartphones in China