The Ministry of the Interior yesterday ordered Taiwanese Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu (小紅書, also known as RedNote in English) for a year, after detecting hundreds of instances of fraud on the platform.
The ISPs have been instructed to block access to the app to its more than 3 million users in Taiwan, effective immediately, Deputy Minister of the Interior Ma Shih-yuan (馬士元) told a news conference at the National Police Agency’s Fraud Prevention Center.
The order is being implemented via protocols governing domain name system (DNS) response policy zones, he said.
Photo: Reuters
Xiaohongshu meets none of the nation’s 15 cybersecurity standards governing online platforms, which puts its millions of Taiwanese users at imminent danger of fraud, he said.
The bureau said in a statement that 1,706 cases of fraud have been identified since last year through the app, with financial losses exceeding NT$247 million (US$7.9 million).
The company that owns the China-based app, Xingyin Information Technology (Shanghai) Co (行吟資訊科技(上海)) does not have an office in Taiwan and has not responded to regulators’ requests to submit a plan to improve data security on its platform, Ma said.
The measures are necessary for authorities to compensate victims of crime and protect consumer rights, he said, adding that Meta Platforms Inc, Alphabet Inc, ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動) and LY Corp, the operator of the Line messaging app, are all in compliance with Taiwanese law.
By comparison, Xingyin has not responded to government legal filings in the 52 days since their receipt, Ma said.
The government must take action against Xiaohongshu or admit the abdication of its regulatory responsibilities, he said, adding that inaction would also be unfair to companies that follow the law.
The decision is part of the ministry’s comprehensive anti-fraud strategy, not an action specifically targeting Xiaohongshu, officials said.
The government has blocked access to 45,059 platform-operating entities, 95 percent of which were based in a foreign nation, they said.
As Xiaohongshu owns more than 1,000 Internet protocol addresses, the government ban would not shut down the app at once, officials said.
Instead, the platform would likely see DNS response policy zone protocols gradually degrade streaming speeds until the corporation complies with laws and regulations, or its service becomes unusable, they said.
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
RSS