Sunday, March 10, 2013

Iran Bans Popular VPNs – Further Restricting Internet Access




Iranian authorities have blocked the use of most virtual private networks (VPNs), a tool that many Iranians use to get around an extensive government Internet filter, Reuters quoted Mehr News Agency as reporting today.

“Within the last few days illegal VPN ports in the country have been blocked,” said Ramezanali Sobhani-Fard, the director of parliament's information and communications technology committee. (Mehr News Agency, 10 March)

Iran filters many sites, including this blog, and the only way a reader in the country can access these censored sites is through the VPNs. Now the government is shutting down the popular VPNs as well.

The government’s move to curtail the use of VPNs has created unintended problems for its own institutions, like banks, to access Internet freely. So the censors will be creating VPNs under government’s own control that the approved and registered users could access.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

a government afraid of its people and of the free flow of information.

a foul herd of donkeys

Anonymous said...

Only thing we will be allowed to watch is a good course of Namaz and sending Salavat to the dear leader.
Islamic "democracy" at work.

Anonymous said...

Mr Uskowi
I'm happy to tell you that I'm sitting behind my desk in Tehran and posting on your blog
no worries there !
Having said that my biggest worry is not Iranian censorship but rather Israeli Sabotage remember Stuxnet ?

reader said...

They can't block all VPNs without blocking the government businesses
which rely heavily on modern IT infrastructure. There are still ways
to access blocked websites even if VPNs are blocked. Iranians are
internet-savvy and no doubt will find software tools to get around this.

PS: it appears that there is a major flaw in the new format of this
website in that almost 50% of the time the comments section becomes
invisible to readers. This happens across all the 3 major web browsers
IE, Firefox and chrome.

Nader Uskowi said...

Anon 8:34 PM, do you use a VPN to access this blog? Have you had any issues at all in the past three months accessing it?


Nader Uskowi said...

Would you elaborate more on the problem, in the comment section or by emailing us at nuskowi@gmail.com. By 50% of the time, do you mean that you could see the comments at a later time?

B.M.A said...

it is true !! many Times you click USKOWI ON IRAN ,the posts come alone without the comment section!.

i think the trick is to double click the tittle of the post as this is what has seemed to be a breakthrough!!.

Anonymous said...

Reader,

just click the refresh-button a couple of times and the comments will become visible again.

Cory said...

Recently many Iranian friends of mine sharing their disappointing thoughts about such decision of Iranian government. I think many ways VPN service helps freelancers working progress and without it they might lose their employment. So considering such service running again needed badly!!