INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND INNOVATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCE (IJRISS)  
ISSN No. 2454-6186 | DOI: 10.47772/IJRISS | Volume IX Issue XI November 2025  
Online Child Safety: The Myth and Reality of Cybersecurity Laws in  
Malaysia  
*Mazlina Mohamad Mangsor., Mazlifah Mansoor., Noraiza Abdul Rahman  
Faculty of Law, Universiti Teknologi MARA Malaysia  
*Corresponding Author  
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2025.91100351  
Received: 26 November 2025; Accepted: 03 December 2025; Published: 11 December 2025  
ABSTRACT  
The accelerated growth of online engineering has amplified both possibilities and risks for children in a digital  
environment. In 2024-2025, Malaysia has inaugurated legal transformations with the enactment of Cyber  
Security Act 2024 and Online Safety Act 2025; and the amendment of Communications and Multimedia  
(Amendment) Act 2025, Penal Code (Amendment) 2025, and Personal Data Protection (Amendment) Act 2024.  
The main purpose is to enhance protections facing harmful content and digital exploitation. This paper aims to  
examine the extent of the online safeguards for child safety under the newly introduced digital legislation in  
Malaysia and to compare them to those of the Australian Online SafetyAct 2021 and the United Kingdom Online  
Safety Act 2023. The paper concludes that Malaysia should consider few highly effective initiatives impose in  
the Australian and the UK digital regimes including an integrated regulatory authority, risk assessments specific  
for children safety and stringent take down rules to be closer with international standards and practices in online  
child protection.  
Keywords: cybersecurity laws, harmful content, Malaysia, online child safety, Online Safety Act  
INTRODUCTION  
The advanced technology using the Internet is a two edged sword presenting benefits and possible risks and  
threats for the children. This situation requires cybersecurity laws to act as a safety net in protecting child  
communications online. In response to this issue and other digital safety concerns, Malaysia launched few  
legislation in 2024 and 2025. The digital legal initiatives are Cyber Security Act 2024, Communications and  
Multimedia (Amendment) Act 2025, Online Safety Act 2025, Penal Code (Amendment) 2024 and Personal Data  
Protection (Amendment) Act 2024, to name a few. Ironically, while Malaysia is still strengthening the legal  
framework to address online child safety, shocking news made headline nationwide about a 14-year old student  
charged with the murder of a 16-year old female student at their school [16]. Amongst the contributing reasons  
stated are social media influence and emotional impulses.  
Against this background, the paper aims to examine the newly introduced digital laws in promoting child safety  
in Malaysia. The paper also briefly analyses selected laws in other jurisdictions include the Australian Online  
Safety Act 2021, Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 and the United Kingdom  
Online Safety 2023. The current Malaysian legal framework collectively protects children’s rights, safety and  
welfare is not discussed including Child Act 2001, Domestic Violence Act 1994, Anti-Trafficking in Persons and  
Anti-Smuggling Migrants Act 2007, Guardianship of Infant Act 1961, Sexual Offences Against Children Act  
2017 and Penal Code.  
Legal Initiatives  
Malaysian Legal Reform  
The year 2024 and 2025 marked a fundamental move for Malaysia, as substantial legal amendments reformed  
the media and telecommunications technology and digital sectors. The new important laws are Cyber Security  
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Act 2024, Data Sharing Act 2025, Malaysia Media Council Act 2025 and Online Safety Act 2025. Relevant  
existing legislation received changes include Communications and Multimedia Act 1998, Communications and  
Multimedia Commission Act 1998, Penal Code and Personal Data Protection Act 2010. Furthermore, the  
Communications and Multimedia (Licensing) Regulations 2000 is revised to impose licensing to Internet  
messaging service and social media providers.  
These initiatives are intensified with the establishment of National Artificial Intelligence Office and National  
Guidelines on AI Governance and Ethics governing policies and regulations on artificial intelligence (‘AI’).  
Whilst few of the legal changes directly impacted upon the promotion of online children safety, others affected  
the issues moderately and are given passing reference only.  
The Cyber Security Act 2024 (‘CSA’) works at a macro level with significant features of the formation of the  
National Critical Information Infrastructure (NCII) which include three layers authorities with different roles  
and responsibilities of the National Cyber Security Committee, Chief Executive of National Cyber Security  
Agency (NACSA) and NCII Sector Lead [6]. Additionally, cybersecurity businesses and service providers must  
commit to stringent practices, risk assessments, prompt reporting and licensing requirements [5].  
The Online Safety Act 2025 (“OSA”) key features include establishment of an online safety committee and  
confers more powers upon the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission to govern digital  
platforms and reinforce safeguards, particularly for protection of child online [9]. The OSA supplements the  
existing Child Act 2001 in protecting child safety. The OSAimposes duties upon social media platform providers  
referred to as Licensed Application Services Providers and Licensed Content Applications Service Providers to  
enhance platform safety, to protect children and to restraint access to harmful content with annual submission of  
digital safety plan. This is reflected in section 18 of the OSA creating a duty of care to protect online safety of  
child user. The Fourth Schedule lists of harmful content include content on child sexual abuse material as  
provided for under section 4 of the Sexual Offences against Children Act (SOACA) 2017 and content that may  
induce a child to cause harm to himself [14]. Thus, this move improves SOACA 2017 with well-defined  
provisions for sexual extortion of children and live-steaming of child sexual abuse. The child sexual abuse  
material and content related to financial fraud are proactively restricted as ‘priority harmful content’.  
Additionally, there are duties to apply steps to mitigate risk of exposure to harmful content, duty to issue  
guidelines to user, duty to enable user to manage online safety, duty to make available mechanism for reporting  
harmful content, duty to make available mechanism for user assistance, duty to establish mechanism for making  
priority harmful content inaccessible and duty to prepare Online Safety Plan. In ensuring these duties enhance  
the accountability among service providers, 10 subsidiary regulations are in the pipeline to regulate online harm  
[10]. These duties provides user guidelines, reporting mechanisms and user assistance.  
The Penal Code (Amendment) Act 2025 changes the criminal landscape to incorporate matters of bullying in  
any kind extensively including psychological and online bullying under sections 507B to 507G. Key  
amendments include offences of threatening, abusive or insulting words or communication causing harassment,  
distress, fear or alarm or likely to feel harassed, distressed, fear or alarmed by such words, communication or act  
and causing a person to believe that harm will be caused. This move echoed the government’s promises to  
safeguard society, especially those who are at risk including children, teenagers and individuals experiencing  
mental harassment by bullies [3].  
The Personal Data Protection (Amendment) Act 2024 have essentially changed the term ‘data user’ to ‘data  
controller’ similar with the international standard and the latter carries the duty to immediately inform the  
authority and affected individuals of any data breach. The amendments also transformed the compliance  
backdrop with the enhancement of the responsibilities of data processors to deal with personal data suffering  
loss, misused, unauthorised access and other risks and a mandatory data protection officer(s) appointment  
ensuring full observance of the Personal Data Protection Act (‘PDPA’). The changes allowed data portability to  
assist transfer of data requested by individuals between service providers and subject to certain conditions data  
can be transferred cross-border as well as recognition of biometric data. Data privacy related to children handled  
by third party may fall under these amendments but does not provide a right of action in civil proceedings against  
the organisation, data controllers or data producers under the PDPA.  
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The Communications and Multimedia (Amendment) Act (‘CMA’) 2025 and the Malaysian Communications  
and Multimedia Commission (Amendment) Act (MCMCA) 2025 significantly enhanced the protection for  
individuals including children and increased the MCMC powers for non-compliance by the service providers.  
Key amendments related to child include expansion of section 233 of the CMA to insert the term ‘grossly’ as  
part of the offence which read “indecent, obscene, false, menacing or ‘grossly’ offensive” content and to  
incorporate new element of offence to the existing phrase of prohibited content an intent to “annoy, abuse,  
threaten or harass…” with the clause “or commit an offence involving fraud or dishonesty against any  
person”[4]. Additionally, six explanations are prescribed to elaborate content. They are obscene, indecent, false,  
menacing and grossly offensive content. Explanations of obscene, indecent and menacing content allocate  
special context related to child as stated in the following Table I.  
Table I Explanations Of Content Related To Child  
Type Of Content  
Obscene  
Explanations  
In relation to a child, obscene content includes but not limited to child sexual grooming,  
sexual degradation that portrays any person as a mere sexual object or to demean the  
dignity, exploit or discriminate them, portrayal of sex or pornography including rape,  
attempted rape against child, sexual bestiality, whether consensual or otherwise.  
Indecent  
In relation to a child, indecent content includes but not limited to content which is profane  
in nature, improper and inappropriate for a child according to a reasonable adult’s  
consideration.  
Menacing  
In relation to a child, menacing content includes but not limited to—  
(a) content that may cause emotional disturbance such as, portrayal of gruesome death,  
and domestic violence; or  
(b) content that may cause a child to imitate the portrayal of such act, such as content  
with suicidal tendencies, dangerous physical acts, street crime acts, or usage of drug.  
Thus, these amendments strengthen measure to regulate prohibited content for children. The CMAalso dedicated  
special punishment for offences in section 233 involving a child under eighteen years with penalty of RM500,000  
and/or 5 years imprisonment and a further fine of RM5,000 for every day during which the offence is continued  
after conviction. Whilst new provision section 233A restraints sending of unsolicited commercial electronic  
message, new provision section 236A allows right of private action for network and fraud damage. Ironically on  
19 August 2025 Malaysian court held that the words ‘offensive’ and ‘annoy’ under the previous scheme of section  
233 of the CMA as unconstitutional as they are not line with Article 8 for equality and Article 10 for freedom of  
speech of the Federal Constitution. How far are the newly amended provisions considered as valid and the legal  
consequences upon child safety are yet to be tested in cases of future judicial review. The old regime of the CMA  
and MCMCAproven working with 1,521 cases of take down content considered as harmful or extremely harmful  
involving children by MCMC from 1st January 2022 to 15 October 2025 [10].  
Australian Online Safety Act 2021  
In 2015, Australia set a world precedent with the enactment of the Enhancing Online Safety Act 1915 and  
creation of an independent online regulator known as eSafety Commissioner (eSafety) [7]. The introduction of  
Australian Online Safety Act 2021 (AOSA) magnified the online safety landscape including digital child  
protection and abolished the old law. Essential features include enhancement of eSafety power, removal notice  
of cyber-abuse material targeted at an Australian adult and of intimate images without consent of a victim, and  
established ‘class 1 material’ hosted in Australia and ‘class 2 material’ hosted overseas. The AOSA coordinated  
these two classes of content with the National Classification Scheme that also regulate classifications of films,  
computer games and certain publications. Additionally, eSafety may request or require the internet service  
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providers to block material that depicts abhorrent violent conduct under the Criminal Code Act. Protection for  
children is highlighted in the following Table II [12].  
Table Ii Highlights Of Protection For Children  
TYPE  
ACTION  
CHILD RELATED ASPECT  
Cyber‑bully  
ing material  
Removal notice given to the provider of a The eSafety is satisfied that the material is or was  
social media service, relevant electronic cyber‑bullying material targeted at an Australian  
service or designated internet service  
child  
Illegal  
restricted  
material  
and Class 1 material include describes or depicts Sexual exploitation of children.  
in a way that is likely to cause offence to a  
Child sexual exploitation material is any content  
reasonable adult, a person who is, or appears  
to be, a child under 18 (whether the person is  
engaged in sexual activity or not)  
that sexualises and takes unfair advantage of a  
child or young person under 18, as well as child  
sexual abuse material that shows their sexual  
assault.  
Online  
Declaration of a restricted access system by The objective is protecting children from exposure  
Content  
Scheme  
the eSafety  
to material that is unsuitable for children.  
Restricted online content is material that is  
unsuitable for children, such as simulated sexual  
activity, nudity and high impact violence.  
Social  
Media  
Minimum  
Age  
Reasonable steps must be taken to prevent There are privacy protections for information  
children who have not reached a minimum collected by social media platforms for the  
age from having accounts by social media purposes of the minimum age requirement.  
platforms  
An interference with the privacy of the individual  
for the purposes of the Privacy Act 1988.  
The latest development is the passing of the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024  
in November 2024. The Parliament strengthened the social media minimum age provision requesting the  
respective social media platforms to take reasonable steps to restrict Australian under 16 years old from having  
accounts starting from December 2025 [1].  
The respective platforms are referred to as ‘age-restricted social media platforms’ providing services that satisfy  
the following conditions:  
(i) the sole purpose, or a significant purpose, of the service is to enable online social interaction between 2 or  
more end‑users;  
(ii) the service allows end‑users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end‑users;  
(iii) the service allows end‑users to post material on the service.  
Australian government have invested an amount $6.5 million for the Age Assurance Trial to commence the trial  
assessment of age verification, age estimation and other aspects incorporated across the digital system [1].  
The UK Online Safety Act 2023  
The UK Online Safety Act 2023 (UKOSA) primary aim is to protect children and adult online. The existing  
Office of Communications (Ofcom) is appointed as the independent regulator for the UKOSA [18]. The UKOSA  
imposes a variety of duties on the Internet service providers to regulate harmful and illegal content for online  
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children safety and to instigate schemes and methods to reduce risks for illegal activities on their platforms and  
remove the illegal materials [18]. Amongst the duties are to conduct a children’s access assessment and duties  
to protect children’s online safety. Services accessed by children are responsible to execute children’s risk  
assessment, continuous monitoring and effectively managing measures to lessen the risk of children retrieving  
harmful content including changing algorithms and enforcing age verification [8].  
Harmful content for children is classified into two types and further explained in the following Table III [13].  
Table Iii Harmful Content For Children  
DUTY  
LEVEL OF RISK  
risk Primary Priority Pornographic content.  
Children’s  
assessment duties.  
Content  
Content which encourages, promotes or provides  
instructions:  
A duty to carry out a  
suitable and sufficient  
children’s  
for suicide or  
risk  
assessment at a time  
for an act of deliberate self-injury or  
for an eating disorder. (Section 61)  
Content which is abusive.  
specified  
UKOSA.  
in  
the  
Priority Content  
Content which incites hatred against people.  
Content which encourages, promotes or provides  
instructions for an act of serious violence against a person.  
Bullying content.  
Content which depicts real serious violence against a  
person/animal or serious injury of a person/animal.  
Content which encourages, promotes or provides  
instructions for a challenge or dangerous stunt.  
Content which encourages a person to ingest, inject or  
inhale harmful substance. (Section 62)  
Special highlights of harmful contents are a new criminal offence created for intentionally promoting or aiding  
serious self-harm and subjected any service that permit users to communicate material or interrelate with each  
other to provisions of the UKOSA. The duties compel the service to quickly withdraw unlawful suicide and self-  
harm material and actively safeguard users from material that is prohibited under the Suicide Act 1961 [18].  
Analysis of the Legal Positions  
The analysis focusses on three primary legislative moves include Malaysian legal reform, particularly the Online  
SafetyAct 2025 (OSA), Australian Online SafetyAct 2021 (AOSA), and the United Kingdom Online SafetyAct  
2023 (UKOSA). The main emphasis is on online child safety in underlining the parameter of the protection,  
responsibilities and implementation as summarised in the following Table IV.  
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Table Iv Comparative Outline  
Country  
Malaysia  
Australia  
The United Kingdom  
Legislation  
Legal Reform include the Online The Online Safety Act The Online Safety Act 2023  
Safety Act 2025 2021  
Regulator  
MCMC (PDP Commissioner for eSafety Commissioner  
data and NCSA for cybersecurity)  
Ofcom  
Areas  
Protection  
of Online  
service  
protection  
providers  
duties  
(ASPs  
for Private messaging, ISPs, Search services connect to UK  
and app stores, search services, based content and user-to-user;  
CASPs) exclusive of cross-border user-to-user,  
application and private messaging comprehensive  
codes  
hosting; classification limits for large  
industry services  
Duty of Care Child  
safety,  
protection Online safety protections Safety  
by  
design,  
children’s  
child  
risk  
instruments, support and reporting and expectations, binding protection,  
system,  
MCMC profound jurisdiction  
Online  
Safety  
Plan; industry  
codes,  
age assessments and safety codes,  
age verification duties  
assurance duties  
Age  
Not  
dictated  
across  
services; Detection/  
removal Children’s access assessments,  
Assurance/  
Verification  
industry code contains child- available in the industry age verification and access  
specific measures, access control codes, age assurance and control to primary priority  
to priority harmful content  
access control duties  
harms duties  
Risk  
Assessments  
Measure to mitigate risk, Online Restricted access system, Illegal  
Safety Plan 24-hour removal notices Assessment  
Content  
Risk  
(ICRA);  
Children’s Access Assessment  
(CAA);  
Children’s  
Risk  
Assessment (CRA)  
Takedown  
Timeframe  
No explicit 24-hour rule, MCMC 24-hour removal duration Necessary  
expeditious  
codes/guidance  
can order fixed unavailability  
for notices (expandable)  
takedown;  
provide timing  
Enforcement Heavier  
mandatory  
penalties,  
standards,  
audit, Availability  
regulate actions;  
of  
blocking  
civil Criminal liability for senior  
of managers; high punitive  
spams; network security measures  
offensive violent content  
measures; business interruption  
orders  
Search/ App Inclusion  
only  
of Inclusion of search and app Inclusion of search services;  
services; services under the industry additional category duties  
service codes  
Services  
content/application  
Inclusion  
licensing  
providers  
for  
large  
Coverage of Not covered under the OSA  
Covered under the industry Covered (user-to-user services)  
Private  
codes  
and with duties  
Messaging  
Malaysia has made significant moves with the Online Safety Act 2025, CMA (Amendment) Act 2025 and Cyber  
SecurityAct 2024. However, this initiative is less proactive, limited scope, and lacking in enforcement compared  
to legal positions in Australia and the UK. Based on Table IV, essential gaps in online child safety scheme involve  
at least five aspects, firstly, Malaysia’s multiple agency scheme i.e. MCMC, National Cyber Security Agency  
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(NCSA), Online Safety Committee and PDP may decrease cohesive focus on children implementation compared  
to the UK’s Ofcom and Australia’s eSafety Commissioner as one entity regulators.  
Secondly, no dictated age assurance and age based access control in Malaysia. Australia imposes age restriction  
under 16 years to register social media account and the UK enforces age assurance and age verification for  
services accessed by children. Nonetheless, on 23 November 2025, Malaysian Minister of Communications  
announced the plan to follow the Australian move with age assurance at 16 years and age verification using  
electronic know your customer (eKYC) application [17].  
Thirdly, Malaysia’s system is mostly complaint and direction driven and lacks current risk assessments (ICRA,  
CAA, CRA) and child safety codes apply in the UK. Australia implements proactive duties with strict removal  
order. On this note Malaysia promises 10 subsidiary regulations to regulate online harm with the hope that they  
will be at par with the international standards. Fourthly, enforcement disparity may exist although Malaysia  
introduced stronger audit and suspension powers with enhanced penalties under CMA (Amendment) 2025.  
Whilst Australia commands a 24-hour takedown rule, the UK imposes executive criminal liability.  
Fifthly, private messaging is expressly excluded under the OSA although there are potential risks for grooming  
and exploitation, unlike inclusion of private messaging features in the Australia’s broad industry codes and the  
UK’s comprehensive user to user protection  
RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION  
Proposed changes to the Malaysian online legal landscape include a stronger cross agency coordination between  
MCMC, NCSA, PDP and Online Safety Committee, not to mention the existence of a Chief Children’s  
Commissioner created under the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (SUHAKAM) (Amendment) Act 2023  
and a possibility of a consolidated operative authority to head the child safety agenda. The suggested updates  
are enhancement of industry code for internet messaging or social media providers to request limitation of adult  
child interaction and independent audits for major services. The private messaging features may be incorporated  
into the OSA with privacy protection and encryption to lessen the risk for child grooming and exploitation.  
Furthermore, the proposed shift is the adoption of the UK approach for age verification and restrain access for  
primary priority harmful content for services possibly accessed by children. The age assurance at 16 is in the  
pipeline and requires refined technical accuracy and reliability to implement in Malaysia with criteria closer to  
international standards. While Malaysia has an Online Safety Plan, the UK introduces ‘living’ risk assessments  
with child based context. Malaysia may consider to strengthen the online child safety with the UK specific  
approach, particularly Illegal Content Risk Assessment (ICRA), Children’s Access Assessment (CAA), and  
Children’s Risk Assessment (CRA).  
Malaysia has made significant steps in online safety and digital control. To learn the lesson from the Australian  
and the UK scheme with proactive and highly effective enforcements, Malaysia may improve the current legal  
reform to enhance matters related to age assurance, private messaging, risk assessments, 24-hours takedown rule  
and consolidated enforcement authority. The moment of truth of the OSA 2025 will be subjected to MCMC’s  
capacity to implement the new platform duties and the severity of the imposed penalty. The race with advanced  
technologies will always be a gap for digital literacy of the policy makers, enforcement agencies and parents.  
The broader definitions of ‘harmful content’ may open to argument against the right to freedom of speech and  
expression. Thus, the primary aspiration is to transform the digital environment into a safe place for children  
using the technology and internet.  
ACKNOWLEDGMENT  
The authors are thankful to the Faculty of Law, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia. for  
supporting the research activities.  
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