FX.co ★ What countries block the Internet

China

Internet penetration rate — 53,2%

In the country, only half of the population is involved in the Internet space; for comparison, in Russia, this figure is 76.4%. Nevertheless, China is the country with the largest audience (700 million). The country has the most advanced, complex and expensive Internet monitoring system.

We can say that in the PRC the Internet was created under government control. The management of the national segment in China is carried out with the help of the Golden Shield system whose development has been started in 1998.

The Golden Shield system controls several directions at once: informs about offenses, controls content, deals with users identification, information monitoring, and traffic management. The Great Firewall of China, a part of the Golden Shield, blocks unwanted Internet resources, such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, and Google. Sites criticizing the Chinese authorities are also blocked.

It should be understood that the whole system would not be so effective if China did not create successful national versions of global Internet services that became unique platforms (Taobao, AliPay, etc.), and the domestic market did not become the largest in the world.

Iran

Internet penetration rate — 44%

Despite the fact that Iran is one of the regular suppliers of news about interlocks and censorship restrictions, it can not be said that the Iranian regulators work only on strengthen prohibitions and blockages. Access to some Internet resources is periodically renewed. It depends on the political situation in the country.

The Internet in Iran appeared in 1992, and the first official rules for access control and censoring of content were introduced in 2001.

One of the rules is that the providers and Internet cafes should have a license to provide relevant services. Only married citizens of Iran, professing Islam, could obtain such licenses.

A large-scale blockage occurred in 2013, then access to many famous sites and networks, including Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, was closed. During anti-government protests in December 2017, the authorities blocked Telegram for two weeks. This decision had a negative impact on the economy: small and medium-sized businesses incurred large losses. The messenger was blocked on January 13, 2018, but on April 30 of the same year, the Iranian court again decided to block Telegram.

Turkey

Internet penetration rate — 58,4%

The new stage of official state policy in the field of the Internet in Turkey began in the spring of 2014 when shortly before the local elections on Twitter and YouTube, information was spread about the corruption scandal in government circles. In 2015, a law was passed allowing the Department of Telecommunications of Turkey to block all sites for 4 hours.

All Internet resources that propagandized drugs, gambling, child pornography, etc., were blocked.

During crisis situations, various social services are being blocked, for example, Twitter. According to information on the transparency of the Internet, which was published by Twitter, Turkish courts satisfy 90% of requests for content removal.

In April 2017, access to the Wikipedia site was blocked. And the reason was an administrative, not a judicial decision. On March 6, 2018, Turkish authorities tightened Internet censorship by blocking access to VPN servers used to bypass blockages and Proton Mail encryption.

Saudi Arabia

Internet penetration rate — 73,8%

In 2016 the authorities of the most influential Arab country with a developed IT sector and Telecom adopted a law obliging to provide fingerprints when buying SIM-cards. Subsequently, all numbers of those who refused to go through this procedure were disconnected.

In the Saudi Internet, sites with gambling, pornography, pirated content, propagandizing drugs are also being blocked, in addition, websites of some human rights organizations, opposition parties, websites criticizing the royal family, and content incompatible with Islamic notions of ethics and morals are blocked.

The control over the Internet in the country is carried out both by special services and public organizations. The story that caused the greatest international resonance is the sentence of Saudi Arabian Ahmad Al-Shamri to the death penalty for a tweet with insults of the Prophet Muhammad.

In September 2017, Saudi Arabia authorities unblocked WhatsApp and Snapchat and allowed calls through the services of Skype, Line, Telegram, and Tango.

Ukraine

Internet penetration rate — 52,5%

Until recently, the issue of Internet control in Ukraine was not discussed until in 2017 Poroshenko adopted a decree on the imposition of new sanctions against Russia. It's about blocking the services of the Russian Mail.Ru Group holding, Yandex, and other Russian IT companies. The biggest impact was caused by the ban on social networks VKontakte (16 million Ukrainian users) and Odnoklassniki (9.5 million), as well as Mail.Ru.

The Ukrainian Internet community is still arguing about the appropriateness of the measures taken. However, almost everyone agrees that the measures taken have proved ineffective.