More than 90 percent of the servers hosting sites that perpetrate fraud, gambling and phishing attacks targeting Chinese netizens are based outside of China, a public security official said on Monday.
More criminals have transferred their servers outside of the country committing Internet crimes by cross-border cooperation to escape investigation and punishment from authorities, Zhong Zhong, an official with the Ministry of Public Security, said during the recent China-ASEAN Information Harbor Forum.
A prominent trend in cyber crime is to use foreign servers and VPN (virtual private network) to commit crimes targeting netizens in China, Zhong said, adding that transnational cyber crime has become a common challenge for authorities in various countries.
Zhao Zhanling, a legal counsel with the Internet Society of China, told the Global Times that it's difficult to prosecute those using foreign servers for criminal liability.
Investigating these kinds of cases require cooperation from foreign Internet service providers who are under no obligation to help Chinese authorities. Also, in order to punish criminals who reside outside of China, the Chinese authorities have to cooperate with foreign judicial departments to extradite them, Zhao said.
