Encryption Photo: VCG

Parents in China have been reminded by the local police to check whether their children's mobile phones have encrypted communication apps, including Telegram. These apps are accused of providing convenience for criminals to destroy evidence.

Some chat apps have become a "gray area" of legal supervision because of the strong privacy of encrypted communications, especially the ability to erase content immediately after reading, which facilitates destruction of criminal evidence, according to a statement released on the Nanjing Municipal Public Security Bureau's official WeChat account on May 16.

Many criminals transfer their servers from domestic locations to overseas, change their communication tools from public software to minor encrypted messaging apps and change their equipment from traditional "pseudo-base station" to "Modem pool," GOIP and VoIP.

The use of new space and equipment to implement telecom network fraud crimes is highly technical, increasing the difficulty of the investigation of these cases, police noted in the statement.

In these cases, minors were defrauded and even became "accomplices" of crimes, and they even committed the crimes of providing assistance in information network-related criminal activities.

More than 92,000 people in China were indicted on charges of providing assistance in information network-related criminal activities from January to September 2022, according to data released by the Supreme People's Procuratorate of China, which added that the number of crimes related to information network-related criminal activities has been on the rise year after year.

According to data released by the Supreme People's Procuratorate in 2022, most of the suspects involved in the crime of providing assistance in information network-related criminal activities were from low-education and low-income groups. Among them, 66.3 percent did not graduate from junior middle school, and 52.4 percent did not have a fixed job.

The crime of providing assistance in information network-related criminal activities has become the third most prosecuted crime in China, only after the crimes of dangerous driving and theft, and it is also the highest rate of information network-related crime.

As a new type of crime with rising rates in recent years, the crime of providing assistance in information network-related criminal activities is inseparable from the popularization and application of the internet. 

Many teenagers lack the ability to screen and discriminate among mixed information on the internet, so they are more likely to become the target of criminal activities, a Beijing-based law expert told the Global Times on Sunday.

Local authorities in East China's Fujian, Northwest China's Gansu and Shaanxi provinces, and South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region also released lists of encrypted communication apps, reminding parents to check their children's cell phones and uninstall the software immediately if found.

Some local authorities said that parents should attach great importance to it if children have installed the software, not only to inform them of the dangers of these apps, but also to take them to the nearest public security organ to find out whether their children had engaged in a crime.

School and family education should play an important role in deterring juvenile crimes, especially information network-related criminal activities, and emphasize to children the harm of harmonious online information and staying away from it, the legal expert said, adding that laws and regulations, especially criminal laws, should crack down on online crimes with the strictest means and penalties.