Government blocked nearly 2800 URLs with with malicious content in 2018

Close to 2,800 URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) with “malicious content” were blocked in 2018, up from 1,385 last year, under a specific provision of the Information Technology Act, Parliament was informed Wednesday. In a written reply to the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Electronics and IT S S Ahluwalia said Section 69A of the IT Act, 2000, empowers Government to block any information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in any computer resource in the interest of sovereignty, security and public order in the country, among others.
He added that 2,799 URLs having malicious content were blocked under the provisions of the said section in 2018.
The number of such URLs that were blocked stood at 1,385 in 2017, 633 in 2016, and 500 in 2015.