Local celebrity Harith Iskander was greeted by a nasty, unpleasant surprise via a Google Alert notification just today.
The 48-year-old Malaysian comedian found that numerous pictures of his son, as well as other children, were being used not only without permission, but on a pornographic site. According to Harith, it is believed that the site is a local site as the language used on it is Bahasa Malaysia. Harith took to Facebook to voice his concerns regarding the issue:
As mentioned in his post above, he’s currently seeking assistance from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to investigate the matter. The Association of Registered Childcare Providers Malaysia (ARCPM) has also advised Harith to bring it up to the PDRM Cyber Crime Section as well as Cyber Security Malaysia (Cyber 999) and D11 Bt Aman to make it into an official report.
Note: Just in case you jump the gun and think that Harith must’ve been surfing porn to have stumbled upon the site, we’ll tell you straight up that he wasn’t. As mentioned, the notification came in via Google Alert – a Google service which allows you to get updates on a topic that interest you, for example, when people post something about you on the web.
On our end, a quick Google search led us to the said website that was using not only pictures of his children, but also Harith himself as well as his wife, Jezamine Lim. Truly vile and appalling!
The copyright at the bottom of the porn site (© 2015 All rights reserved) indicates that it has only been around for a less than a year. Well, perhaps it’s time for it to go!
Help Harith out, you guys. Report it to MCMC here.
UPDATE (29th June, 4pm):
According to a report by TMI, Commercial Crime Investigation Department deputy director (Cyber Crime & Multimedia Investigation) SAC Mohd Kamaruddin Md Din said that although police had information on individuals suspected of running such websites, the case was often difficult to prove. He told TMI:
We need to put the person at the time and place when the action took place. Then we have to get information which only the website administrator can provide. They never cooperate.
On Harith’s predicament, Kamaruddin said one way such photos could have ended up there was through picture sharing on social media platforms.
“In his (Harith’s) case, although the porn site is in the Malay language, the domain and server are highly likely hosted abroad,” said Kamaruddin.
Unfortunately such cases of stolen and unauthorised use of personal photographs are not unique, he added. In some cases, cyberbullying may also be involved, he added.
“We had one case where a complainant’s photograph was posted in a porn site. It was nothing explicit … but the culprit had sent the site admin her profiles, photos and phone number. It was a result of an office dispute between the complainant and the culprit,” said Kamaruddin.
He said in cases like this involving pornographic sites, police would request the MCMC to block such websites if investigations hit a dead end. “We have many laws that we can use to put the suspects behind bars but obtaining solid evidence is the hardest thing to do,” said Kamaruddin.
He said among the laws that can be used to charge perpetrators were the Child Act, provisions under the Penal Code for pornography and blackmailing, the Film Censorship Act and Copyright Act (for videos) as well as the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Act 1988.
Harith has since lodged a police report at the Taman Tun Dr Ismail police station.
Sources: Harith Iskander’s Facebook page, TMI.
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