HN Explorer

Tell HN: HN is now blocked by UAE proxy

47 points by phugoid ↗ HN
I noticed yesterday that HN is now blocked by Etisalat, one of the United Arab Emirates' two telecom companies. Their proxy server displays a page like this instead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Block_etisalat_3.jpg

Sites usually get blocked because a customer complained to Etisalat about their content, or because they were arbitrarily added to the SmartFilter database. I think it's the latter in this case.

I will follow up with Etisalat and let you know if I make any progress...

18 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 64.3 ms ] thread
keefe
in the non-english nanny state you really wonder how HACKER news got b& when most americans conflate hacker/cracker?

I think you'll hit a wall pretty quick. Some bureaucrat saw hacker or maybe even realized there IS disruptive info here and ban it went.

pg
Either that or it's a clever move to make the country more productive.
TomOfTTB
After reading this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etisalat#Internet_Censorship

I'm forced to conclude we all must be doing something right.

alnayyir
If you take a moment to pause the "ra ra shish koom ba" cheerleading, it's worth contemplating what manner of content this site would have that would've caused this.
alextingle
"Websites criticizing the United Arab Emirates"

I think this is about to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

uggedal
I think it's added to SmartFilter, I noticed that news.ycombinator.com was blocked at work yesterday. news.ycombinator.net works though.
prakash
Any HN users want to do a meetup in Dubai? My email is in my profile.
nickcharlton
I noticed this yesterday at work (who use Etisalat). I emailed then, trying to explain the usual content of HN.

Back at home though (on Du), it's not blocked.

I suspect it is just an automatic block, but we'll see.

snprbob86
I get a little bit more scared each time I hear this type of story. Is there any hope for clever technology which makes it impossible to intelligently filter traffic? Some sort of mesh networking something? Surely someone on HN must know the state of the art here.
c1sc0
Just proxy/VPN out.
csomar
Only the future will tell if there Non-Smart automatic filters have detected it, or their Smart-Non-automatic filters.
pavel_lishin
I liked their old image better: http://widgetsex.com/uae.png

(disregard what looks like an NSFW domain, it's just a URL I bought on a whim. If you take off the image, you'll see my friend's dog, widget, winking at you in a suggestive-but-entirely-SFW manner.)