Cybersecurity threats rose by 20% between 2020-21, IT Ministry data shows

The IT ministry told the panel that in 2021, over 6096 URLs were blocked in 2021, and in 2022 till June, 1096 URLs have been taken down

The number of cybersecurity threats in India rose by 20% between 2020 and 2021, according to govt data, which also reveals that the practice of takedowns of content deemed harmful by authorities continues unabated.

In 2020, there were 11,59,208 threats handled by the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), which further rose to 14,02,809 in 2021. This is a whopping 255% jump from the 3,94,499 instances CERT-In handled in 2019.

The data was furnished by the Union Ministry of Electronics and IT to the parliamentary standing committee on IT headed by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor.

The ministry also provided data on takedowns under section 69A of the IT Act, which empowers the government to restrict access to online content under certain circumstances, including safeguarding the sovereignty and integrity of the country, security, public order among others.

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India has faced criticism for the increasingly high numbers of takedown requests of content on various sites.

The IT ministry told the panel that in 2021, over 6,096 URLs were blocked in 2021, while 1,096 URLs have been taken down till June 2022.

These takedowns were in response to over 7,898 and 1,362 requests for takedowns in 2021 and 2022, respectively. This is a slight dip from 2020 when there were 11,449 takedowns following 9,849 requests. In 2019 and in 2018, there were 5,891 and 4,192 takedowns, respectively, following 3,635 and 2,799 requests.

The IT ministry also gave data on the number of posts it has taken down on various social media platforms. In 2021, over 1,082 posts on Facebook, 464 posts on Instagram, 2,851 posts on Twitter, 1,121 on YouTube and 578 posts on other platforms were taken down.

In 2022, these figures were: 125 (Facebook), 39 (Instagram), 540 (Twitter), 293 (YouTube) and 99 (others). In 2020, there were 1,717 takedowns on Facebook, 1,273 on Instagram, 2,731 on Twitter, 2,175 on YouTube and 1,963 on other platforms.

The year 2019 saw the highest takedowns on Facebook (2,049), while 75 posts were taken down on Instagram. The figures for Twitter, YouTube and others stood at 1041, 409 and 61 respectively.

Last week, in its transparency report, Twitter said that after the US, India was the country that sought information on Twitter accounts the most, and that India accounted for 19% of such requests globally.

A month ago, Twitter filed a lawsuit against India in the Karnataka High Court to challenge its orders for takedown of content.