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Multiple service providers are blocking DuckDuckGo in India
- throwawaysea 6y agoIs there any precedent for this in India (blocking a search engine or other 'utility' website, as opposed to specific content)?
- httgp 6y agoThey block websites and URLs all the time. Often times, there won’t be any justification (or even logic) behind the action — they’ve even blocked gist.github.com once.
- thewhitetulip 6y agoIndia is the worst in the world (since 2014 right wing govt came to power) for internet shut downs. the current government is a ultra right wing majority and they shut down the internet in areas which protest. then their minions try to drown the voices of dissent online and offline by abusing dissenters or plain beating them up. then the ultra right wing government arrests those who are beaten up under sedition, act of war against the state, keeps them in jail for 90+ days without filing an FIR and when they are released after 90days according the the law, they're arrested again on trumped up charges!
- psankar 6y agoPlenty. They even blocked github once because (do not laugh) some people used it to share pirated movie links.
- throwfghyy585 6y agoLooks like a glitch (as the reddit thread indicates). DDG works fine on BSNL. Note that r/India is very intolerant of views which are pro-India, and has consequently become an echo chamber for endia folk. I'd take anything coming out of this subred with a bucket of salt.
- unmole 6y agoThe fact that it works on BSNL means absolutely nothing. The implementation of blocking across ISPs is extremely inconsistent: https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.08590 https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.08590 > Note that r/India is very intolerant of views which are pro-India /r/india heavily skews liberal and anti-Modi. That is not the same thing as being intolerant of pro-India views.
- threwo4234rwef 6y ago> The fact that it works on BSNL means absolutely nothing. It means absolutely everything when 'evil intentions' are being imputed. BSNL being a PSU is a good litmus test for this. > /r/india heavily skews liberal and anti-Modi. That is not the same thing as being intolerant of pro-India views. It's certainly very liberal in banning people whose views goes against those held by the mods (one of whom is apparently Pakistani). Little wonder r/indiadiscussions is filled with complaints about the blatant censorship over at r/india.
- unmole 6y ago> BSNL being a PSU is a good litmus test for this. Yes, because our PSUs and especially BSNL are renouned for being agile and technically competent. > one of whom is apparently Pakistani I heard they are a Vatican funded Naxali CIA front.
- threwo4234rwef 6y ago> Yes, because our PSUs and especially BSNL are renouned for being agile and technically competent. Yes because clearly, a company which runs a large fraction of the national telephony/internet network, and regularly injects obnoxious ads into plain HTTP pages, can't find it within its abilities to write a few simple DNS/firewall rules, simply because some 'woke' dude on the intertubes will wake up to the 'evil plans' of the Gobermint. Keep wallowing in your 'conspiracy' theories my dude.
- thewhitetulip 6y ago
- wobbly_bush 6y ago> Meanwhile, DuckDuckGo confirmed on Twitter that it’s looking into the issue and suggested Android users change their DNS provider to get around the issue. If changing DNS works, how is this blocked by the ISP? Seems to indicate there is some other technical problem. Treat the rest of the article, and specially with tweets, with skepticism.
- slezyr 6y agoThey simply filter out DNS records on their caching DNS server that they provide to their users.
- strathmeyer 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_blocking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_blocking
- prashnts 6y agoHaven’t been back in India for a while, but the DNS blocking happens all the time. One big provider (AirTel) even injected ads in non-https pages quite frequently. Anecdotally, I had a cable service in Delhi where the provider started throttling me if I didn’t make any request to their dns server in some arbitrary time interval. So changing your dns might not be the fix (i fixed it by sending random queries to their server...).
- ignoramous 6y ago> One big provider (AirTel) even injected ads in non-https pages quite frequently. ...and in "HTTPS" pages "secured" by cloudflare. https://medium.com/@karthikb351/airtel-is-sniffing-and-censoring-cloudflares-traffic-in-india-and-they-don-t-even-know-it-90935f7f6d98 https://medium.com/@karthikb351/airtel-is-sniffing-and-censo...
- jwatt 6y agoIt would have been nice to have a more proactive response in the original discussion on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12092188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12092188
- Marc_Bryan 6y agoIndia, ruled by some big(!) heads who doesn't understand a dot in technology. They are governed by impulsive decisions of the policy makers and it's a name sake democracy. No real freedom of speech is allowed there AFAIK. Govt / Private / Policing is just too much and a lot of gag order as well. They just can't stand anything and consequences could cost a life too! Technology is being used by most of the population who doesn't even know what is behind the scenes. ISPs utilise it do whatever they want and there is a ruling body known as TRAI / DOT which doesn't care to explain the rationale behind any of their decisions for blocking / banning etc., God save that country!
- wobbly_bush 6y ago> there is a ruling body known as TRAI / DOT which doesn't care to explain the rationale behind any of their decisions for blocking / banning etc. This is a big misconception in India. The URL blocking for the major part is ordered by courts and not the government - https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/ban-porn-sites-or-lose-license-high-court-to-isps-1351836-2018-09-28 https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/ban-porn-sit...
- fennecfoxen 6y ago> The URL blocking for the major part is ordered by courts and not the government I can't speak to TRAI and DOT involvement, but the statement that courts are not part of the "government" is an over-technical definition centered around Parliamentary technicalities that happen to use the word, and of limited utility here. The courts are very much part of the apparatus which governs the people of a nation.
- wobbly_bush 6y agoI see where you are coming from but the distinction is important because a lot of times these discussions are followed up by discussion about voting for certain political parties with suggestions of one political party banning/censoring more than other political parties. If one doesn't focus on the exact points of change where it's possible, complaining against the "big government" is going to be a very slow process to bring change.
- villgax 6y agoIt's working now.
- sbmthakur 6y agoWorking fine on my ION broadband, but it's blocked on Jio.
- suchitpuri 6y agoGmail, Google Play Store, Google Cloud, Google Drive, and Google Meet also suffered because of the Airtel Issue. DuckDuckGo's blockage could also be because of the same issue. https://www.91mobiles.com/hub/gmail-play-store-and-other-google-services-affected-for-some-airtel-users/ https://www.91mobiles.com/hub/gmail-play-store-and-other-goo...
- thewhitetulip 6y agoThis is a vicious cycle actually. Because there is precedent that the current govt bans everything that critizes them, people get hyper when some glitch happens. then all the right wingers descend to blame the cynics 'oh they are anti national' and cynics become worse cynics, 'see they ban everything and then abuse everyone who questions'
- noarchy 6y agoCanada here. I currently cannot load DDG unless I'm connected to a US VPN (haven't tried other countries yet). Edit: the site is accessible for me again at 14h30, Eastern time.
- alacombe 6y agoCanada here too, DDG loads fine via Shaw.
- ResearchAtPlay 6y agoI am also in Canada and cannot load DDG via my university's vpn, but DDG works fine on my home internet connection.
- kburman 6y agoWorking for me on Airtel. I think it's more of a glitch.
- muktabh 6y agoJust checked, works for me on 2 different ISPs. This looks like fake news.
- moneytide1 6y agoI just saw a billboard for it on a 45mph stretch through a medium sized city.
- numToStr 6y agoIndian here. Just want to say that Indian Govt. is a piece of sh*t. They don't understand a literal about technology. They want to protect citizen's privacy but they don't want to promote the thing that provides privacy. Also, their official websites looks like they will die at any moment.
- sundarurfriend 6y agoBanned on ACT Broadband too, now. I get a "PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR" which is the same error given on banned porn and other sites too. I feel like I'm missing a finger, it's been so long since I've regularly had to use any other search engine.
- bprasanna 6y agoIt doesn't work for me as well! Not sure whats the reason behind this blocking! For now using bing as DDG uses it in the background!