Article 26 of the 2018 Law on Cybersecurity says that domestic and foreign businesses providing services on telecom networks, the internet, and other services online in Vietnam must have information authenticated when users register digital accounts and secure users’ information and accounts.

Domestic and foreign businesses providing services on telecom networks, internet networks, and other online services that analyze and process data on personal information, relationships of service providers, and service users in Vietnam must store the data in Vietnam for a certain time.

Foreign companies must have branches or representative offices in Vietnam.

However, the majority of cross-border service providers, including Facebook, Google, Telegram and Netflix, have not set up representative offices in Vietnam.

NCS’s CTO Vu Ngoc Son said it is possible to prevent "social evils" on cross-border services, such as Telegram. Content filters, especially filters based on keywords or AI images, are some of the technical solutions. However, there must be cooperation between producers and app managers.

“Though the Law on Cybersecurity has clear provisions about what cross-border service providers have to do, they are providing services to Vietnam without legal representatives in Vietnam. This causes difficulties for state management agencies to examine the services and impose punishments,” Son said.

CyRadar CEO Nguyen Minh Duc and CEO of Athena Vo Do Thang said it is difficult to eliminate bad content on Telegram. Telegram users need to be cautious when using the service, and agencies should launch campaigns to make users aware of the traps they may fall into when using the app.

Thang has urged state management agencies to strictly deal with violations, saying that current laws are very clear and those who break the laws must be sanctioned.

“Why does the US government act so strictly with TikTok and the EU apply strong measures for Google and Facebook, but we don’t do the same thing?” Thang said. 

“It is time for Vietnam to take action to tighten control over cross-border services,” he added.

Experts have warned about the trend of users migrating to the Telegram messaging app. With free use, uncensored content, end-to-end encrypted messages, and an easy to delete chat history, Telegram is considered a "paradise" for cybercriminals.

Trong Dat