Published January 12, 2021, 8:00 PM The Philippines’ largest integrated telco PLDT Inc. and its wireless unit, Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart), continue to fortify protection from online sexual abuse and exploitation of children (OSAEC) during the coronavirus pandemic. To date, the PLDT Group has taken down 3,011 sites that host illicit content featuring children as mandated by the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC). The PLDT Group is also building up further the capacity of its network-based child protection platform and is currently testing additional technologies that would allow automatic blocking of end-user access to OSAEC or child pornographic content. “When users try to open these malicious materials that are on our network blacklist, our child protection platform will automatically redirect them to a landing page that informs them that the files they’re trying to access violate the country’s Anti-Child Pornography Law,” explained Angel Redoble, FVP and Chief Information Security Officer of ePLDT Group, PLDT Group, and Smart Communications.