Businesses, schools must record Net use

Government agencies, game shops and Internet cafes all come under the same Information and Communications Technology regulations, which will be strictly enforced after a oneyear grace period.

The 2007 Computer Crimes Act, which came into effect on July 18 last year, applies to operators of both mobile and fixedline telephone services, who have built datastorage facilities to record their clients' usage.

The businesses that have complied with the law so far are all local Internet Service Providers that officially began to record information from February 19, 2008.

The remaining entities, designated as the socalled "third and last group", who will be required to follow the law include all government agencies, private and government schools, apartments and residential complexes, online game shops and Internet cafes.

Only household computer users are exempt.

The information to be collected includes identification details such as names and addresses of people registered with websites or online applications, logs of Internet use and Internet Protocol addresses and URLs to websites surfed by those users.

Pol Colonel Yannaphol Yangyuen, a senior Department of Special Investigation official tasked with enforcing the law, said organisations that were fined for failing to provide facilities for the storage of information would also have their public image tainted apart from paying a heavy fine.

He said it would be a priority for organisations to prevent employees from harassing people by sending insulting or defamatory messages on web boards or forwarding pornographic material via email by setting up recording procedures for internal computer use.

They must comply with the law by making the stored information available every 90 days.

The 2007 Computer Crimes Act is the first Thai law against all types of electronic crime committed through the use of computers and information technology.

It also outlaws hacking, phishing, online and systems intrusion, service disruption through the flooding of information and distribution of junk mail and advertising bogus produc