Naive young netizens who are heavy Internet users and online shoppers are particularly vulnerable to cyber theft and hacking. (Photo : Reuters)
A weeklong Internet security education campaign for the young will be launched at the beginning of June. It will be the largest Internet safety campaign ever seen in China.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will co-host the initiative together with The Public Security Ministry and eight more organizations. It will mainly target netizens who are heavy Internet users but have little knowledge of safety, according to key organizer Cyberspace Administration of China.
The China Internet Network Information Center reports that a third of China's 650 million Internet users are younger than 30. This demographic are frequent online shoppers, whose private information is particularly at risk.
"Young people born after 1990 will be a major pillar of Chinese Internet in the future, and the strongest power to guard cyber safety," said Yang Chunyan, deputy director of the administration's cybersecurity bureau.
Shen Yi, an Internet affairs professor at Fudan University remarks that "the country should pay more attention to upgrading the anti-hacking system protecting infrastructure. It is not easy to build a 360-degree bulletproof protection in ever country, but we should have done a better job."
President Xi Jinping has stressed the importance of cybersecurity in his administration, making it a focal point in the government's work. China has become increasingly independent on the foreign IT industry, but it has been making more efforts to develop internal security.
The country's development of its own IT sector has the potential of challenging the dominance of the U.S. and foreign companies in the Chinese software market.
Despite utilizing anti-virus software and security programs, young netizens must learn how to practice surfing the Web and volunteering personal information in a responsible and discerning manner. They must use strong passwords and stay wary of scams, as well as malicious apps and emails.
