PLDT, Smart intensify campaign against online child abuse

The PLDT Group said Tuesday it has intensified efforts to combat online child sexual abuse and exploitation (OSAEC), blocking more than 400,000 links containing child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAEM) materials.

“PLDT and Smart recognize children not only as important stakeholders but also as the future of our country. This drives our joint effort to work closely with like-minded organizations and utilize advanced technological solutions to ensure child protection and prevent access to illegal child content online,” said Jojo G. Gendrano, SVP and Chief Information Security Officer of PLDT.

He noted that the group has “invested significantly” in developing a groundbreaking child protection platform capable of blocking illegal content at the content level, making it harder to detect and remove.

To complement this technology, the company’s membership in the U.K.-based Internet Watch Foundation and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection’s (C3P) Project Arachnid has expanded its threat intelligence resources. By the end of August, PLDT had identified and blocked more than 1.4 million links to CSAEM.

Gendrano added that in addition to technological measures and international collaborations, PLDT and Smart have integrated child rights protection into their organizational structure by piloting UNICEF’s updated Mobile Operators Child Rights Impact Self-Assessment (MO-CRIA) tool.

This tool enables companies to fully understand the challenges, opportunities and implications of children’s rights and apply them in their business operations.

The group led by Pangilinan has also forged partnerships with industry peers, government agencies, law enforcement agencies and child rights advocates from both the private and public sectors.

President Marcos recently called for closer cooperation among all stakeholders in the fight against OSAEC, as the Philippines currently ranks second in the world after India for the number of cases of online child sexual exploitation.

Mr Marcos said one in every 100 Filipino children is a victim of abuse and called OSAEC the “worst crime against humanity.”

“It’s a terrible statistic. We can’t let this continue. We won’t let this continue.”

The government has committed to strengthening initiatives against OSAEC and opening a hotline for reports that aims to “make the Philippines the worst place for those who abuse and exploit children.”

Image Credit: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg