Don’t be the Grinch who stole Christmas. Thus said the Department of Social Welfare and Development as it appealed to Internet hackers to spare its Twitter account from malicious mischief as it opened a new one to coordinate relief efforts for victims of typhoon Pablo following the hacking of its old account.
Once again, Filipinos proved the power of social media when some 3,000 of them quickly heeded the call to pack relief goods for evacuees displaced by last week’s massive flooding.
Backed by an array of “citizen journalists,” social media have become critical tools in coping with natural disasters, particularly in disaster-prone countries like the Philippines, according to experts from the United States and Japan.
The House committee on information and communications approved on Monday a consolidated bill defining cyber-crimes and providing safeguards and penalties to protect the integrity and confidentiality of subscribers’ information.
