Indonesia Blocks 3.8 Million Gambling Sites as Transactions Near $25.8b
Jakarta. The Communication and Informatics Ministry has reported that the total value of online gambling transactions in Indonesia is approaching Rp 400 trillion ($25.79 billion), with approximately 3 million active players involved.
Teguh Arifiyadi, Director of Informatics Application Control at the ministry, announced that the government will take decisive action against service providers involved in online gambling. Platforms that are not registered as electronic system providers (PSE) and are found facilitating gambling activities will be immediately blocked.
"If there are indications of violations, we will issue an initial warning. However, if the platform is not registered as a PSE and is found to be used for online gambling, we will cut off access immediately without warning," Teguh stated on Monday in Jakarta.
Examples of PSEs include web-based companies such as PayPal, Steam, Facebook, Google, Amazon, and X (Twitter).
To tackle this growing issue, the ministry uses AI-powered web crawlers, manual patrols, and public complaints to detect and shut down gambling sites. Over the past seven years, the ministry has blocked 3.8 million online gambling platforms, with 2 million blocked in the last year alone.
In a related effort, the Financial Services Authority (OJK) has frozen 6,400 bank accounts suspected of being linked to illegal gambling. This action is part of a broader initiative to disrupt the financial networks supporting these activities. OJK has also instructed banks to thoroughly investigate suspicious accounts and temporarily suspend transactions when necessary. However, the widespread use of false identities and purchased account details presents a significant challenge to these efforts.
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