A NEW educational program was launched in Beijing on Tuesday to help senior citizens avoid falling victim to Internet fraud.

The program, initiated by China’s Internet giant Tencent with guidance from the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) and the office of the National Working Commission on Aging, will provide a series of online lessons, video clips and articles on how to avoid various forms of Internet fraud.

A report jointly released by Tencent and people.cn in June showed that 37 percent of senior netizens had been targets of Internet fraud.

Credulousness and a lack of Internet knowledge have made middle-aged and elderly netizens more vulnerable to Internet fraud, said Chen Shiqu, deputy director of the criminal investigation bureau under the MPS, at the launching ceremony of the program, pledging more efforts to crack down on such crimes.

China has been strengthening its forces for combating telecom and Internet fraud in recent years. In 2017 alone, Chinese police solved about 78,000 telecom and online scam cases. (Xinhua)