Malaysia denies web traffic rerouting plan ‘draconian’ as censorship fears rise

The regulator said the move would protect users from harmful content, but critics argue it could dent the country’s digital economy

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Malaysia said the DNS redirection measure was aimed at protecting vulnerable groups from malicious content. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 1:00pm, 8 Sep 2024

Malaysia’s communications regulator has defended a plan for local telecommunications firms to divert web traffic through their own domain name system (DNS) servers, saying the move was meant to protect users from harmful online content.

The directive, which takes effect on September 30, has prompted new concerns, including from some ruling party officials, of growing online censorship and fears that it could jeopardise the country’s digital economy.

DNS is a system that translates domain names into numerical addresses used by computers to locate websites on the internet.

While local internet service providers, or ISPs, often operate their own DNS servers, some web users use public DNS servers, such as those provided by Google or Cloudflare, to gain faster internet speeds or access websites blocked on local ISPs.

Under the government plan, user requests from such third-party DNS servers will be redirected to those operated by Malaysian ISPs.

In a statement late on Saturday, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) denied the measure was “draconian”, saying it was aimed at protecting vulnerable groups from malicious or harmful content, such as online gambling, pornography, copyright infringements, phishing or financial scams.