The ‘Digital Divide’ as a Legal Vulnerability: How Disinformation and Cybercrime Laws Fail to Protect the Rural Population

Pakistan has expanded internet access at pace, yet the benefits, and protections, remain uneven. As of January 2025, an estimated 116 million Pakistanis were online, translating to roughly 45.7% of the population. But connectivity alone doesn’t equal safety. In rural districts, where digital literacy is low and connectivity is patchy, the surge of online scams, identity theft and political disinformation has exposed a legal blind spot: our current cybercrime and “fake news” rules are not built for the realities of rural users.

A Fast-Growing Online Public, But Not An Evenly Protected One

The growth is unmistakable. Broadband subscriptions and mobile use continue to rise, with network experience improving in parts of the country. Yet national averages mask deep gaps. Global benchmarks show people in rural areas of low- and middle-income countries are about 28% less likely to use mobile internet than urban residents, a pattern that mirrors Pakistan’s own divide. Fewer rural users means less experience, lower digital literacy and greater exposure to fraud or coordinated propaganda when they do go online.

Recent diagnostics reinforce the point: despite widespread mobile broadband coverage, adoption lags because of affordability, device access and skills. In Pakistan, this translates into a large “usage gap,” people living under coverage but not meaningfully online, leaving first-time and infrequent users particularly vulnerable to phishing, loan scams, SIM swaps and misinformation framed as public-interest news.

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The 2025 Legal Turn: Tougher Rules But Limited Rural Relief

In January 2025, Parliament approved amendments to the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA), creating harsher penalties for spreading “false or fake” information and establishing new forums with powers to fine and imprison offenders. The government framed the move as a response to disinformation; journalism bodies and digital rights groups warned of over-breadth and the risk of suppressing legitimate speech. Whatever one’s view on that debate, the hard question for rural Pakistan remains: do these changes actually reduce harm from scams and deceit that target digitally inexperienced users? The answer so far is, not much.

Legal tightening can deter malicious actors, but enforcement capacity and case throughout matter more for protection on the ground. Data shared with the National Assembly show hundreds of thousands of cybercrime complaints since 2020, yet only a fraction become cases, and convictions are rare. A low conversion from complaint to conviction blunts the law’s deterrence, especially in districts where victims lack the resources to pursue complex digital evidence trails.

Scams Outpacing Enforcement, and Trust Under Strain

The Federal Investigation Agency’s cybercrime trends reflect the challenge: large volumes of verified complaints, fluctuating investigation rates and a continued struggle to secure convictions. For a villager whose WhatsApp is hijacked or CNIC is misused to open accounts, the journey from FIR to verdict is long and technically intricate. Meanwhile, high-profile data-misuse cases and leaks, some implicating officials, have eroded confidence that personal data is safe, further complicating adoption and trust in digital services.

Quality of connectivity adds another wrinkle. Even where networks are available, speeds and reliability vary, limiting the effectiveness of basic hygiene measures like multi-factor authentication, secure updates and official verification portals. Opensignal’s Pakistan report shows modest average mobile speeds; for rural users sharing devices on congested networks, secure behaviour becomes harder, not easier.

Where the Law Misses the Lived Reality

Three design gaps stand out. First, the 2025 amendments focus heavily on content offences, what people say or share, rather than the nuts and bolts of protection for first-time users: identity safeguards, redress for small-value fraud at scale, and rapid takedown pipelines for cloned pages and fraudulent mobile wallets. Second, remedies are procedurally demanding. Rural complainants must navigate FIRs, forensic requirements and platform processes that presume stable connectivity, device ownership and literacy. Third, prevention is under-weighted. Disinformation and fraud travel through the same channels, messaging apps, short videos, viral posts—but the law does not pair offences with mandatory investments in rural digital literacy, local-language fact-checking and community-based verification services.

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What would Close the Gap, without Curbing Legitimate Speech

A rural-first protection strategy would concentrate on enforcement plumbing and user support, not broader speech controls. That means expanding FIA cybercrime capacity in secondary cities, setting service-level timelines for platform response in local languages, and creating district-level help desks that can freeze fraudulent transfers within hours, not weeks. It also means legally requiring key public-facing services, banking, welfare, telecom, to provide “offline backstops” for recovery: in-person re-verification and restoration paths when a number or ID is compromised, without demanding long digital paper trails that rural victims cannot produce. These are implementation choices, not constitutional battles.

On the prevention side, public data show large cohorts are covered by mobile broadband but not using it. The fix is not only cheaper data; it is skills. A national digital-literacy drive, delivered through schools, Lady Health Workers, agri-extension networks and mosque/community committees, should teach simple, repeatable behaviours: verify senders, never share one-time codes, use call-back to known numbers, and confirm subsidy or job offers on official helplines before clicking links. International evidence suggests such programs reduce the success rate of low-sophistication scams that disproportionately hit new users. Pakistan’s own usage gap data argue for that pivot. GSMA

A Balanced Path that Strengthens the Digital Future

None of this requires abandoning PECA or weakening the state’s hand against genuine criminal networks. It requires re-targeting. Parliament’s 2025 amendments were aimed at online disorder; the next step is to measure what protects newcomers from the everyday harms that push households back offline. That calls for publishing district-level complaint-to-conviction dashboards, tracking restitution rather than just arrests, and aligning penalties with the most common rural harms such as small-ticket mobile wallet fraud and identity misuse. It also calls for putting resources where the users are: in tehsils and union councils that are coming online for the first time.

Concluding Reflections

Pakistan is not alone in facing a rural digital safety gap. But the country does have a choice. With half the population still offline and adoption rising, the window to pair connectivity with credible protections is now. If we build the enforcement plumbing, invest in rural skills, and demand faster, local-language redress from platforms and service providers, the law will finally match the lived experience of the people it exists to protect. That is how we narrow the digital divide and strengthen, not chill, our online public sphere.