NEW DELHI: The government informed Parliament on Wednesday that it had blocked 3,000 websites which hosted pornographic content.
In a written reply in Lok Sabha, the information technology ministry said "most of the child pornographic websites are hosted from outside India".
It said the home ministry was executing a project on cyber crime prevention against women and children (CCPWC), which would act as an institutional mechanism for online cyber crime reporting.
It said the government had not conducted any study on paedophiles and sex offenders using social media to intimidate and harass women and children.
The government said the cyber world was anonymous and universally available. "Most of the child pornographic websites are hosted from outside India. Interpol maintains and updates a list on extreme child sexual abuse. Government periodically blocks (sites) on this list shared by Central Bureau of Investigation as the national crime bureau of Interpol. More than 3,000 such websites/URLs have been blocked so far," it said.
"Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000 has provisions for removal of objectionable online content. The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines) Rules 2011 notified under Section 79 of the IT Act require that the intermediaries shall observe due diligence while discharging their duties and shall inform the users of computer resources not to host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, update or share any information that is harmful, objectionable, affect minors and is unlawful in any way," it added.
The ministry said it was in regular touch with intermediaries including various social media websites to effectively block/remove objectionable content. "Further, social networking sites hosted anywhere in the world are monitored by law enforcement agencies in order to check/remove objectionable contents from the websites in accordance with the provisions of IT Act," it added.