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"The Undernet's abuse group has tried repeatedly to develop responsible and responsive abuse contact within the tm.net.my and jaring.my providers to handle abuse complaints to no avail."

--A North American abuse coordinator for the popular Undernet.org chat servers

 
 
 
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The hidden epidemic

But like any "thriving democracy", there has been a cost attached at the end. Malaysians, described as conservative by nature, seem completely uninhibited on the Net, posting false information, trading foul language and promulgating a variety of offensive and even racist opinions. The culprits often hide behind fictitious names, and at times their noise has drowned out the more credible voices on the Net.

The Anwar incident may have heightened the volume of mischief on the Net, but Malaysian users are already garnering a bad reputation for their misdeeds. Even prior to September, Malaysians were being banned or k-lined from chat servers for various abuses, including scrolling, flooding and mass messaging.

A North American abuse coordinator for the popular Undernet.org chat servers, only known by the handle "Angel", suggested that some of the blame might lie with local ISPs (Internet Service Providers)--TMnet and Jaring--for allowing abusers to go scot-free.

"The Undernet's abuse group has tried repeatedly to develop responsible and responsive abuse contact within the tm.net.my and jaring.my providers to handle abuse complaints to no avail. I personally have contacted the MyCERT team in the past with less than satisfactory results," said Angel in response to an email query.

MyCERT is the local chapter of the Computer Emergency Response Team, which provides a point of reference for the Internet community in Malaysia to deal with computer security incidents and their prevention.

In March, local media reported that Malaysians were being repeatedly banned by DALnet chat servers for abusive behavior. Because the two ISPs practise dynamic Internet Protocol addressing instead of static IPs, some DALnet servers may have found it hard to trace offenders and instead banned all users with *.my addresses.

Angel suggested the geographical ban may have also been used as a resource-conserving device as TMnet already had its own DALnet chat server.

Internet security consultant and cracking hobbyist Dinesh Nair believed that Net abuse is usually confined to "a few immature users", giving the rest a bad name. "Many others have committed Net abuse due to ignorance or first-time blues. These people I am willing to forgive, but it is the ones who do it intentionally that need to be punished," he said.

He added that the ISPs can nip such incidents in the bud if their abuse desks are staffed and always listening to take action. "The problem is, of the two ISPs in Malaysia, only one listens and takes action on complaints of abuse. The other seems to send complaints to the bit bucket."


 

 
 
 
 
 

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