[JURIST] Chinese police announced Tuesday that they have arrested approximately 15,000 people in connection with alleged cyber crimes. Over 7,400 cyber crime related cases have been investigated across the country and they include online fraud, illegal sale of personal data, and hacking. The arrests [Reuters report] follow a special six-month operation to aggressively eliminate threats to the internet which began in July. The Ministry of Public Security [official backgrounder] has claimed that the operation has caught suspects who hacked into company, bank, and government agency websites. China has been extremely strict in recent years with regulating factual inaccuracies proclaimed over the internet. Earlier this week a man was detained for exaggerating the death toll from blasts last week in the city of Tianjin. A women who falsely claimed that her father was killed in the bombings and sought out donations from the public as a result was also arrested.

Stopping cybercrime related threats has been the mission for countries all around the world in recent years. In June the US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] unsealed the indictment [JURIST report] of a Turkish man for allegedly organizing three cyber-attacks that led to an estimated $55 million in global losses. In May a former US government employee with the Department of Energy (DOE) [official website] and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) [official website] was charged [JURIST report] with a four count violation of federal law in connection with an attempted phishing scheme involving Department of Energy employee emails. In July 2014 police arrested seven individuals [JURIST report] on charges connecting them to an international group that defrauded the online ticketing service StubHub of approximately $1.6 million. In February 2014, the Philippines high court upheld [JURIST report] its Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012; which combats various online crimes such as hacking, identify theft, child pornography and libel.