The cabinet has approved the second Tuesday of every February to serve as Thailand Safer Internet Day to promote cyberspace safety among youngsters.
This followed a proposal by the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security.
The ministry’s Department of Children and Youth teamed up with the public, private and civil sectors to form the Thailand Safe Internet Coalition last December.
Founded from a children’s rights approach, the coalition aims to improve the overall reporting of online abuse; enhance coordination among sectors including the ICT private sector; improve support for victims; and build resilience among young people and parents to help them cope with online risks, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), one of the coalition partners.
The Royal Thai Police recorded 189,363 cyber crime complaints between March last year and Feb 8, with losses totalling 29.7 billion baht.
The five most-reported crimes are online shopping scams (64,168 cases) causing victims losses worth 886 million baht; swindles from fake activities (26,747 cases) causing losses of 3 billion baht; loan scams (22,401 cases) causing losses of 938 million baht; call-centre scams (17,155 cases) which cost 3 billion baht in losses; and investment scams (15,607 cases) resulting in losses of 7.3 billion baht.
Others include money-borrowing scams (6,022 cases), money-transfer scams (4,415 cases), Ponzi scams (2,996 cases), romance scams (2,897 cases), online defamation (2,492 cases) and fake news (278 cases).