Iran Beefs up Internet Censorship With Proxy Crackdown

Ban makes it harder to use Facebook, Skype

While most industrialized nations today exercise a degree of online censorship, Iran has often been billedas among the worst. Much like China, Iran both blocksmaterial questioning the ruling party, and material it finds morally questionable (such as pornography).

I. Iran Bans Uncensored VPNs

In regimes like Iran, one common way to get around filters is to use an encrypted virtual proxy network (VPN), which funnels requests for forbidden content, encrypted, to servers outside of Iran, and then replies, encrypted, to the customer. But Iranian internet censorship ratcheted up this week as state authorities began blocking traffic from encrypted VPNs.

Ramezanali Sobhani-Fard, a Parliamentarian from Iran's ruling ABII party and the head of parliament's information and communications technology committee, calls VPN use"illegal" for most citizens. In comments to state news agency Mehr, he remarks, "Within the last few days illegal VPN ports in the country have been blocked. Only legal and registered VPNs can from now on be used."

The blockade inadvertently cut off access to Google Inc. (GOOG) and Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) search portals, which aretypically allowed in censored form. Mr.Sobhani-Fard said the government was looking into that unpleasant side effect of the new censorship rollout.

Reutersreports that an internet user inIsfahan, Iran's second largest city, confirms that VPNs are no longer working. The man, who went by "Mohamad", comments, "VPNs are cut off. They've shut all the ports."

The blockade bans popular internet telephony services such as Skype and Viber. It also blocks access to the world's most popular social network -- Facebook. Iran views Facebook, Inc.'s (FB) network as a portal to dissent and has banned it; yet despite that the network has been popular in Iran thanks to the use of VPNs.

II. Political Unrest is Boiling in Islamist Republic

The crackdown on VPNs coincides with a dangerous time for Iran's ruling regime.

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Iran Beefs up Internet Censorship With Proxy Crackdown