HANOI, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's top legislature on Tuesday approved a draft law on cyber security, which will take effect on Jan. 1, 2019.
Under the new law, people are banned to use cyber space to sabotage the state, undermine national unity, blaspheme religions, spread false information causing socioeconomic losses, engage in crimes and social evils such as human trafficking and prostitution, and publish pornographic data, among others.
Also under the new law, Vietnamese and foreign firms which provide cyber space-based services have to verify information of users when they register digital accounts, and supply a cyber security unit under the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security with the users' information to serve crime investigation.
Local and foreign companies which collect, exploit, analyze and process personal information and data of their customers or data created by users in Vietnam have to store the data in the country. Such foreign firms are required to establish branches or representative offices in Vietnam.
By the end of February, Vietnam, with a population of some 95 million, had nearly 11.8 million fixed broadband Internet subscribers, according to the Vietnam Telecommunications Authority.
As of late March, Vietnam had 126.3 million fixed and mobile phone subscribers, including 118.7 million mobile ones.
The country made total telecommunications revenues of 96.4 trillion Vietnamese dong (over 4.2 billion U.S. dollars) in the first quarter of this year, according to the country's General Statistics Office.
By August 2017, Zalo, a Vietnamese messaging application, had 80 million members in Vietnam and other countries, including the United States and Myanmar.