Jakarta – The Communications and Information Ministry has blocked eight websites that were found to be posting fabricated political news based on factual reports published by several respected online news outlets.

Communications and Information Ministry spokesman Ismail Cawidu said on Thursday that the ministry had blacklisted the eight fake news sites on Trust Positif on Wednesday afternoon.

Trust Positif is a public database accessible on trustpositif.kemenkominfo.com. It has a list of sites that contain negative content and violate prevailing laws.

Shortly after the official announcement of the country's presidential election result, several bogus news portals emerged using names similar to already-established news websites, such as tempo.co, kompas.com, detik.com, antaranews.com, inilah.com, liputan6.com and tribunnews.com.

The falsified news sites use the subdomain -news.com after its domain; for example, antaranews.com-news.com. Ismail said the ministry had blocked access to the fake news sites following an influx of complaints from people nationwide.

"We have blocked Internet access [to the eight websites], whose servers are in other countries. These websites can no longer be accessed from Indonesia," Ismail told The Jakarta Post.

National Police spokesman Agus Rianto said the creators of the fake news sites had no clear intention other than trying to cause trouble following the election result announcement. "We would like to thank the public for not being influenced or provoked by these bogus news publishers," Agus told the Post.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/08/02/ministry-bans-eight-bogus-news-sites.html