China tells Alibaba, Baidu cloud units to prevent telecoms fraud

The cyberspace administration and police department related to China’s industry ministry said on Tuesday, it had summoned the cloud units of both Alibaba and Baidu Inc. urging them to better prevent telecom network fraud. according to a report in Reuters quoting the country’s industry ministry sources.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) cybersecurity administration and the criminal investigation bureau under the Ministry of Public Security issued the summons.

As such, the two domestic tech giants had allowed users to access a large number of fraud websites on their cloud platforms, said the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) in a statement, adding that it required them to correct the issues.

According to reports, MIIT reprimanded the two firms for linking to too many ambiguous websites, advising them to take responsibility for abiding by China’s cyber security law and to rectify relevant issues within a specific period, otherwise they will be punished severely if they don’t conduct modification.

Hence, Alibaba Cloud and Baidu Cloud said they would “conscientiously implement the regulatory requirements,” and “effectively prevent and resolve the risks of telecommunications network fraud,” according to the MIIT statement.

On the other hand, China has been strengthening data regulation in recent years, by building its own state-backed cloud system, while President Xi Jinping in April saying that the country would resolutely crackdown on telecom and internet fraud.

Alibaba and Baidu are required to “earnestly fulfil their main responsibilities for network and information security,” the industry ministry statement said.