[ooni-talk] Report: Blocking of Wikipedia in Iran

[Maria Xynou]

Hello,

We published a report on the temporary blocking of the Farsi language
edition of Wikipedia in Iran:
https://ooni.org/post/2020-iran-blocks-farsi-wikipedia/

OONI measurements collected over the last days show that the Farsi
edition of Wikipedia (fa.wikipedia.org) was blocked on at least 6
networks in Iran between 2nd to 3rd March 2020.

This may be the first time that we're seeing the whole Farsi language
edition of Wikipedia blocked in Iran.

Previously, the block was limited to the HTTP version of specific
Wikipedia articles, but that probably wasn't very noticeable over the
last years, since Iranian internet users could easily access censored
Wikipedia pages over HTTPS.

We also found the Farsi edition of Wikinews (fa.wikinews.org) blocked in
Iran, though we're being told that it's been blocked for several years now.

Both Farsi Wikipedia and Wikinews were blocked by means of DNS tampering
and SNI filtering. In our report, we share relevant data.

Farsi Wikipedia has been unblocked (confirmed by OONI measurements
collected from 13:29 UTC on 3rd March 2020 onwards), while Farsi
Wikinews remains blocked in Iran.

It's worth highlighting that the mobile version of the Farsi edition of
Wikipedia (fa.m.wikipedia.org) remained accessible in Iran, as did the
English version of Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org).

You can continue to track the situation through openly published OONI
measurements:
https://explorer.ooni.org/search?until=2020-03-05&probe_cc=IR&test_name=web_connectivity

Best,

Maria.

-- 
Maria Xynou
Research & Partnerships Director
Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)
https://ooni.org/
PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E


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