OONI: Open Observatory of Network Interference

Announcing OONI's New Anonymous Credential System

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In our previous posts, we outlined why OONI requires an anonymous credential system and detailed the security and privacy requirements such a system must satisfy. We highlighted the core challenge: OONI needs to establish trust in submitted measurements without creating identifiers that could reveal user identity or allow cross-network tracking.

Anonymous credentials offer a cryptographic mechanism to authenticate certain properties of a probe — such as long-term participation or measurement volume — without exposing who the user is, where they are, or linking their activity across networks.

How Internet Censorship Impacts the Women’s Rights Movement in Iran: Insights from OONI Data and Activist Interviews

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Women’s rights are severely restricted in Iran. Three years ago, the Women, Life, Freedom movement – and widespread protests – erupted in Iran following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini in police custody in September 2022. But according to the UN, the repression of women in Iran has intensified in recent years, despite the mass protests.

Access to information is also severely restricted in Iran, and women’s rights websites are no exception. OONI data shows that access to women’s rights websites have been blocked in Iran since at least 2014.

Protect Our Internet. Document Censorship – Support OONI Today.

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Image designed by Robotina.

Today, we are launching OONI’s end-of-year fundraising campaign. This year, the need to document internet censorship is more important than ever.

Around the world, access to online information is increasingly blocked – often during events such as protests and elections – limiting people’s ability to communicate and access independent reporting during critical moments.

Throughout the year, we observed many cases of online restrictions. Major social media platforms were blocked in countries such as Togo, Cameroon, and Tanzania. Messaging apps like Telegram and WhatsApp faced blocks in Kenya, Vietnam, Nepal, and Iran. And more independent news media websites were recently blocked in India, Egypt, and Jordan.

Survey: How useful are the new OONI resources to you?

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

To better support the internet freedom community in monitoring and responding to censorship events, we’ve introduced several major enhancements over the past few years, including:

New OONI Explorer Censorship Findings platform
New OONI Explorer thematic censorship pages
New research reports based on OONI data
Methodological improvements (e.g., new throttling methodology)
Data analysis improvements through OONI Pipeline v5

We’re now seeking community feedback on these resources and methodological updates so we can evaluate their impact and continue improving them.

Throttling of Social Media in Türkiye During Protests: An Analysis of OONI Data

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Protests erupted throughout Türkiye on 19th March 2025 – following the arrest of Istanbul’s mayor and presidential candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu – and remain ongoing. Amid the protests, access to major social media platforms was reportedly interfered with in Türkiye.

In this report, we present OONI data and findings from our investigation into the throttling of social media platforms across various networks in Türkiye during March and September 2025, periods when interference with these platforms was reported. Specifically, OONI data suggests that access to Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, TikTok, and Signal was throttled, whereas access to Telegram was blocked. Additionally, YouTube was blocked via DNS on TurkNet (AS12735). Details are shared below.

Information Controls in India and Pakistan During the May 2025 Conflict

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In May 2025, after the terrorist attack in Kashmir on 22nd April 2025, political tension between India and Pakistan escalated into a 4-day conflict. Amid the conflict, both governments started blocking multiple news media outlets to fight ‘disinformation campaigns’ and ‘hate speech’ on the internet.

This report is published in collaboration with DRF (Digital Rights Foundation) and shares OONI data on blocks that emerged in both India and Pakistan amid the armed conflict in May 2025.

Join us at the OMG Village at the Global Gathering 2025!

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Are you attending the upcoming Global Gathering event in Estoril, Portugal? Are you interested in investigating internet shutdowns and censorship, and curious to learn more about the tools and open datasets that support this work?

Join us at the Global Gathering Open Measurement Gathering (OMG) Village: a community space organized and hosted by 4 internet measurement projects: Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), Measurement Lab (M-Lab), Internet Outage Detection & Analysis (IODA), and Censored Planet. We also have the pleasure of being joined by our friends Netalitica and Project Ainita, who will each host a booth on Day 3.

OONI Security Audit: Penetration Test Report

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As part of our free software ethos and community commitment to deliver secure and high quality code, we are publishing the detailed penetration test report conducted by Radically Open Security with support from the Open Technology Fund (OTF).

Download Security Report

This report contains the results of a crystal box penetration test — a core part of our broader security audit process – carried out between August 5, 2024 and October 18, 2024. The security audit focused on evaluating the core components of OONI’s software to ensure they meet high standards of security and quality.

OONI Analysis on the Blocking of the X Social Media Platform in Tanzania

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This report documents the ongoing blocking of the X social media platform in Tanzania based on OONI data.

Download in PDF

Introduction

Access to the X social media platform (formerly known as Twitter) has reportedly been blocked on networks in Tanzania since May 2025. This document provides an Expert Opinion by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) Foundation on this block.

[Event Report] India, Let's build the list 2025

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is a guest post by The Bachchao Project, originally published here.

In June 2025, The Bachchao Project and OONI reviewed the list of websites used for monitoring website censorship in India. This is part of our efforts as a collective to build robust civil society engagement in monitoring internet access in India. As part of this event, we invited a small group of experts and practitioners to join us for a series of workshops focused on updating specific categories of websites tested for censorship in India.

OMG! Summary of the 3rd Open Measurement Gathering (OMG) Ask Me Anything (AMA) event

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

On June 25, 2025, the Open Measurement Gathering (OMG) held a public event, “Open Measurement Gathering AMA”, featuring Censored Planet, IODA, OONI, and Measurement Lab. This was a chance for the OMG group to share project updates, future plans, and gather questions and feedback from the Internet freedom community. Each measurement group presented for 30 minutes followed by Q&A.

This public virtual event was inspired by the past two OMG convenings (public reports 1 and 2) at which OMG groups have shared exciting updates to their platforms, tools, and/or datasets before sharing with the broader Internet freedom community. For the third OMG convening, the groups decided to share previewing updates publicly to encourage community feedback.

The Longest Silence: Internet Shutdowns During Bangladesh’s 2024 Uprising

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This study was conducted by Digitally Right in collaboration with the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI). Key contributors include Tohidul Islam Raso from Digitally Right and Maria Xynou from OONI. Suhadha Afrin, a Tech Policy Fellow at Digitally Right and journalist at Prothom Alo, also contributed to the research and documentation for this report. The research has been reviewed by Miraj Ahmed Chowdhury from Digitally Right.

We are equally grateful to Digitally Right’s Network Measurement Fellows across Bangladesh, whose work in tracking disruptions and documenting censorship during the protests helped verify and strengthen the findings of this report. We also thank the journalists whose extensive coverage of the shutdowns provided a vital foundation for this report and the individuals affiliated with operators and service provider organizations who provided interviews and shared relevant information that informed this analysis.

OONI Analysis of Telegram Blocking in Kenya During the 2023 and 2024 KCSE Exams

Wed, 14 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This report supported a petition filed at the High Court of Kenya in May 2025, challenging the unlawful disruption of internet access in Kenya. OONI data is used as evidence in support of this landmark public interest case. Learn more here.

Download in PDF

Introduction

Access to Telegram was blocked in Kenya during the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) national exams in both November 2023 and November 2024. This report provides an analysis by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) Foundation on these blocks.

Launch: New OONI Explorer thematic censorship pages

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Image: OONI Explorer thematic censorship pages.

Today we are excited to announce the publication of new OONI Explorer thematic censorship pages! These new pages include charts and reports documenting the blocking of social media, news media, and circumvention tools around the world based on OONI data.

In this blog post, we share information about the new OONI Explorer thematic censorship pages.

About OONI Explorer

OONI Explorer is the world’s largest open dataset on internet censorship.

Requirements for OONI’s anonymous credentials system

Mon, 24 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The goal of integrating an anonymous credential system in OONI Probe is to increase trust in OONI measurements by enriching the data with properties about the probes that collected them, while preserving the privacy of our users.

In our first blog post on the topic, we explain at a high level what this system is meant to achieve and provide a comprehensive academic literature review of the current state of the art in cryptographic anonymous credential systems.

A Legal and Technical Analysis of Internet Censorship in France

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is a guest report by Etienne Maynier and Taziden analyzing Internet censorship in France. You can find a more in-depth legal and technical analysis in French at https://censxres.fr/. This work was done in a personal capacity and doesn’t represent the view of their employers.

Key Findings

Over the past years, several court orders have requested French Internet Service Providers to block more and more websites, whether for copyright infringement, illegal streaming of sport competitions, or more recently pornography websites. In the same time, several laws have been passed in order to provide legal power to several French administrations to block websites involved in cybercrime or fraud.
Our OONI measurements on the four main commercial ISPs networks in the fall of 2024 show that this website censorship is implemented at the DNS resolver level, and that for most censorship cases tested (intellectual property, illegal streaming of sport competition and European censorship of Russian organizations), the application of censorship is very inconsistent among different ISPs.
The increasing usage of website censorship to regulate political questions by French courts and lawmakers, combined with a technical implementation that is easy to bypass, create a high risk of escalation towards more complex and invasive censorship in France. Such an escalation would lead to more control and more surveillance over Internet traffic by French authorities and could have damaging implications for freedom of expression and online privacy in France.

Introduction

Over the past few years, France has seen a major increase in censorship of internet websites, both with court orders forcing ISPs to block websites, and with new bills passed that grant legal power to national agencies to block websites. In 2024 alone, we have seen French authorities blocking TikTok in Kanaky New Caledonia, new laws permitting to block websites used for cybercrime, a legal decision blocking the Z-library website and a new law forcing pornography websites to check the age of visitors before they can access the content (law that should be applied in the first half of 2025). While the first laws that legalized Internet censorship in France opened important debates in civil society about digital rights and freedom of expression (the Bill for Confidence in the Digital Economy - LCEN in 2004 and the High Authority for the diffusion of art work and protection of rights on Internet - HADOPI in 2009), this topic is now rarely addressed by digital rights organizations and is not well known by the general public. Yet, it raises important questions about freedom of expression but also the potential lack of oversight and abuse of these laws to block media or opposition websites.

Launch: New OONI Probe multiplatform app

Tue, 04 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We are excited to share that we have launched an OONI Probe multiplatform app for Android and iOS! This is an important milestone for the long-term sustainability of the OONI Probe apps, as it will enable us to ensure feature parity and to ship new features faster and more effectively across platforms.

Update now to the latest version (5.0.3) to start using the new OONI Probe app on Android or iOS.

OONI Probe is a free and open source tool that we have built since 2012, designed to measure various forms of internet censorship. To enable communities worldwide to run OONI Probe and contribute measurements (which are published as open data in real-time), we have made OONI Probe available for both mobile and desktop platforms. Specifically, OONI Probe is available for Android, F-Droid, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Probe Security Without Identification

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks to Toomore Chiang and OCF community, this post is available in Mandarin (zh-tw).

Image: In his seminal paper Security without identification: transaction systems to make big brother obsolete, Chaum envisioned users interacting anonymously with various organizations using a single digital wallet, even if those organizations colluded.

Year in Review: OONI in 2024

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As the new year begins, we publish this post to share some OONI highlights from 2024. We also share some of the things we’ll be working on in 2025!

New OONI Foundation

Image: Notary appointment in Rome, Italy, to establish the Open Observatory of Network Interference Foundation (OONI) ETS in February 2024.

Survey: Share your feedback on OONI tools, resources and documentation

Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

OONI’s community now includes over 50 organisations and hundreds of thousands of OONI Probe users all over the world.

We are very thankful for your trust in our tools, your support over the years and your contributions to different parts of OONI-verse through collected measurements, localisation projects, and research projects.

With this survey, we want to reflect on our community activities and learn how we can improve upon our outreach, tools and documentation.

Censorship Chronicles: The systematic suppression of independent media in Russia

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Nearly three years ago, when Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine, it also initiated a parallel campaign: a censorship war targeting independent news media within the country.

Merely a week after the conflict started, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Russia started blocking access to several foreign news media websites (such as BBC and Deutsche Welle) and independent Russian news media websites (such as Meduza and New Times). Within a year, independent news media censorship in Russia had become pervasive. In our previous report, we confirmed the blocking of 139 news media domains in Russia.

iMAP 2024: State of Internet Censorship in 9 countries

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

On 22st October 2024, our long-term partner, Sinar Project, published 9 new research reports on internet censorship in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong (China) in collaboration with their Internet Monitoring and Action Project (iMAP) partners. These reports are based on OONI data collected between July 2023 to June 2024 from 9 countries: Cambodia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

Internet Monitoring Action Project (iMAP) aims to establish regional and in-country networks that monitor network interference and restrictions to the freedom of expression online in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong (China) in collaboration with national digital rights partners in these countries.

Launch: Next generation OONI Run for community-driven censorship testing

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Image: OONI Run.

Today we are thrilled to announce the launch of OONI Run v2: the next generation version of OONI Run for community-driven censorship testing.

Originally launched in September 2017, OONI Run is a platform for creating mobile deep links that you can share with OONI Probe users to coordinate the testing of websites for censorship. Over the past 7 years, OONI Run has been used extensively by community members in Venezuela, Malaysia, India, and around the world as part of their censorship measurement campaigns aimed at monitoring and rapidly responding to emergent censorship events. To improve the OONI Run platform and better meet community needs, we previously conducted an OONI Run usability study, through which we documented extensive community feedback.

Animation: OONI Partner Gathering 2024

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier this year, we had the opportunity to host the OONI Partner Gathering 2024: a two-day event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where we brought our partners from Asia and the Middle East together to exchange skills and knowledge on internet censorship research. Our goal was to strengthen global and regional collaborations on censorship measurement research and advocacy. We previously published a report which shares details about the event and its outcomes.

Today, we are excited to share a new animation about the OONI Partner Gathering 2024. This animation provides a glimpse into the event, highlighting the importance of community participation in censorship measurement research. Watch the animation below!

Job Opening: OONI Backend Developer

Thu, 10 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Are you a backend developer interested in defending human rights on the internet? We have a job opening for you!

The OONI team (a non-profit measuring internet censorship globally) is looking for a dedicated Backend Developer to work on our backend components and infrastructure, and to provide OONI data analysis support for our research efforts.

Job description

By joining our team, you will work on OONI’s backend components, ensuring the stable and reliable performance of our infrastructure in response to the growing global coverage of measurements. You will also provide OONI data analysis support for OONI research reports and in support of the research of our partners.

OONI Community Interviews: Chido Musodza

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Today we are excited to publish an interview with Chido Musodza, Program Associate, Community Engagement at Localization Lab. Chido is passionate about supporting minority language communities through the localization of open-source technology. Localization, on the one hand, makes tech products more inclusive and on the other hand, empowers the development of minority languages and their presence in digital space.

Watch Chido’s interview to learn more about the need for localization and community engagement!

Russia blocked OONI Explorer, a large open dataset on Internet censorship

Wed, 25 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Update: A year later, on 2nd September 2025, OONI received an email from Roskomnadzor, informing us that they had decided to unblock access to OONI Explorer (https://explorer.ooni.org/ru/chart/circumvention). However, as of January 2026, OONI data suggests that access to OONI Explorer remains blocked on some networks in Russia.

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As of 11th September 2024, Russia has blocked one of our platforms: OONI Explorer.

OONI Explorer is one of the largest open datasets on internet censorship around the world. We first launched this web platform back in 2016 with the goal of enabling researchers, journalists, and human rights defenders to investigate internet censorship based on empirical network measurement data that is contributed by OONI Probe users worldwide. Every day, we publish new measurements from around the world in real-time.

Kazakhstan: TLS MITM attacks and blocking of news media, human rights, and circumvention tool sites

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In recent years, internet censorship in Kazakhstan has been reported quite extensively. As part of this study, OONI, Internet Freedom Kazakhstan (IFKZ), and Eurasian Digital Foundation collaborated to investigate internet censorship in Kazakhstan over the past year (between June 2023 to June 2024) through the analysis of empirical network measurement data.

In this report, we share OONI censorship measurement findings and relevant legal context. We found numerous news media, human rights, and circumvention tool websites blocked in Kazakhstan by means of TLS interference. We also found 7 distinct intermediate certificates signed by 4 distinct root CAs being used to carry out TLS man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks, targeting at least 14 distinct domain names on at least 19 different networks in Kazakhstan. We share more details below.

OONI Partner Gathering 2024 in Malaysia

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We are excited to share that on 8th and 9th May 2024, we hosted an in-person OONI Partner Gathering in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As part of this 2-day event, we brought our partners (primarily from Asia and the Middle East) together to exchange skills and knowledge and strengthen our collaborations on internet censorship research and advocacy. In this report, we share details about the event and its outcomes.

OONI Community Interviews: Tawanda Mugari

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Today we are excited to publish an interview with Tawanda Mugari, Co-Founder & Geek in Chief of Digital Society of Africa (DSA). Through our partnership with DSA, we have had the opportunity to collaborate on research and training activities across southern Africa. Tawanda is a digital security expert, community leader and trainer who has been part of the OONI community for years. Watch Tawanda’s interview to learn more about his important work!

Tanzania: Surge in online LGBTIQ censorship and other targeted blocks

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This report documents the blocking of LGBTIQ websites and other targeted blocks in Tanzania based on the analysis of OONI data.

Download in PDF

Key Findings

Our analysis of OONI data collected from Tanzania over the last year (between 1st January 2023 to 31st January 2024) reveals the extensive blocking of LGBTIQ sites, which correlates with the escalating discrimination and crackdown on LGBTIQ communities in Tanzania in recent years. Many other blocks identified as part of this study appear to be targeted in nature, as they involve very specific websites, while other (more popular) sites from the same category (e.g. social media, human rights) were found accessible.

Internet sanctions on Russian media: diverging actions and mixed effects

Mon, 25 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The original post appeared on the blog of SIDN Labs.

As a response to the Russian aggression against Ukraine, the European Union (EU) imposed sanctions on organisations affiliated with the Russian Federation prohibiting them from broadcasting content in the EU, including online distribution. In a collaborative effort with researchers from the University of Illinois Chicago, Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), the University of Twente and the University of Amsterdam, we carried out a longitudinal traffic analysis to understand how internet service providers (ISPs) in different EU member states implement these sanctions. We found that the degree of blocking varies widely, both between and within individual EU member states. This raises questions about the effectiveness of the EU sanctions. This blog is a summary of the paper we published last month.

Year in Review: OONI in 2023

Fri, 22 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

As the end of 2023 approaches, we publish this post to share some OONI highlights from the last year. We also share some of the things we’ll be working on in 2024!

New OONI non-profit legal entity

OONI is now a registered NGO in Italy!

OONI Community Interviews: Ihueze Nwobilor

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Today we are thrilled to publish an interview with Ihueze Nwobilor: Senior Programs Officer with Paradigm Initiative. Through our partnership with Paradigm Initiative, we have had the opportunity to collaborate on several research reports examining internet censorship in Nigeria. Ihueze’s work is focused on digital inclusion and on making digital technologies accessible to the under-served communities in numerous African countries, including Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Sudan, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Since the blocking of Twitter in Nigeria in 2021, Ihueze has become an active OONI Probe user and gained a unique experience of using OONI data in his advocacy and government engagement work. Through his advocacy and litigation efforts with Paradigm Initiative, the Twitter ban in Nigeria was declared unlawful and access to the platform was restored.

Launch: New OONI Censorship Findings platform

Thu, 30 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Image: OONI Censorship Findings platform.

Today we are thrilled to announce the launch of the OONI Censorship Findings platform!

Internet censorship is frequently being reported around the world, but how can we verify such events with empirical evidence?

Our new platform provides short reports on internet censorship around the world based on OONI’s open data. With the launch of the platform, we are publishing 20 reports on internet censorship that emerged in 2023. In response to emergent censorship events, this platform will be updated with new reports on an ongoing basis.

Measure all the Things! IMC Hackathon 2023

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

On 23rd October 2023, right before the Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) 2023, we co-hosted an internet measurement hackathon in collaboration with the Internet Society (ISOC), M-Lab, Censored Planet and IODA.

In this post we would like to share some of the projects that were developed as part of the hackathon. It was great to see how much was accomplished in such a short period of time!

The day started with an introduction to the various datasets from OONI’s Arturo, Censored Planet’s Armin, IODA’s Zach, ISOC’s Amreesh and M-Lab’s Lai Yi. Following the brief presentations, the participants formed teams to work on some of the specific challenges that we had proposed or came up with new ones.

iMAP 2023: State of Internet Censorship in 10 countries

Mon, 23 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

On 13th October 2023, our long-term partner, Sinar Project, published 10 new research reports on internet censorship in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong (China) in collaboration with their Internet Monitoring and Action Project (iMAP) partners. These reports are based on OONI data collected between July 2022 to June 2023 from 10 countries: Cambodia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, Timor-Leste and Vietnam.

OONI Community Interviews: Siti Nurliza

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Today we are thrilled to publish an interview with Siti Nurliza: a talented data analyst and technologist with Sinar Project, one of our most dedicated and long-term partners who have led OONI censorship measurement efforts in Southeast Asia for more than 6 years!

Sinar Project is a civic tech initiative using open technology, open data and policy analysis to systematically make important information public and more accessible to the Malaysian people. Over the years, we collaborated with Sinar Project on measuring and reporting on internet censorship in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Myanmar through the use of OONI tools and data.

Grindr blocked in Jordan: Shrinking LGBTQ spaces

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Jordan recently blocked access to Grindr — the world’s largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans, and queer people — adding to the list of social media apps banned in the country, including TikTok and Clubhouse.

OONI network measurement data collected from Jordan suggests that ISPs started blocking access to Grindr on August 8th 2023, and that the block remains ongoing.

This report shares OONI data on the blocking of Grindr in Jordan.

Background

Jordan is one of the few Middle Eastern countries where consensual same-sex sexual acts are not criminalised. Previously, the colonial-era Criminal Code Bill (1936) banned same-sex relations, but this was repealed in 1951 with the enactment of the country’s Penal Code. While homosexual conduct is technically legal in Jordan, the General Iftaa Department issued a religious ruling (Fatwa) in December 2021, declaring that “homosexuality is illegal under Islamic law”. Such religious rulings are not legally binding, but the General Iftaa Department acts in an advisory capacity to government branches and courts.

Join us at the IMC 2023 Hackathon on Network Interference using Open Data

Mon, 28 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Are you attending the Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) 2023?

Join us at the IMC Hackathon on Network Interference using Open Data on Monday, 23rd October 2023, in Montreal, Canada. The hackathon is organized by the Internet Society (ISOC), the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), M-Lab and Censored Planet.

IMC is a yearly academic conference focusing on Internet measurement and analysis. The conference is sponsored by ACM SIGCOMM.

This IMC Hackathon will be about exploring, analyzing, and visualizing open network measurement data with a focus on identifying Internet censorship and Internet shutdown events.

Senegal: Social media blocks and network outages amid political unrest

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Violent protests erupted in Senegal on 1st June 2023 over the sentencing of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko. On the same day, OONI data collected from Senegal showed that ISPs started blocking access to several instant messaging apps and social media platforms (which were also reported by several news outlets). Those blocks appear to have been in place for a week (until 7th June 2023). Meanwhile, Cloudflare observed three disruptions to traffic from AS37649 (Free/Tigo), and two disruptions at Sudatel Senegal during this period. Following the arrest of Ousmane Sonko on 28th July 2023, the Senegalese Ministry of Communication, Telecommunications and the Digital Economy issued another shutdown order on 31st July 2023 to cut off mobile internet access.

China is blocking OONI

Fri, 28 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We usually report on how other services are blocked. This time, we’re reporting on how our own services are blocked.

China recently started blocking access to our website (ooni.org) and censorship measurement app (OONI Probe).

This is not too surprising, given the fact that our work and tools center around measuring and exposing internet censorship (in China and around the world), and China has one of the most advanced and pervasive levels of internet censorship in the world. However, we’re not sure why China decided to start blocking us at this specific moment in time (as opposed to years ago), given that OONI measurements have been collected from China since 2014. The timing of OONI blocking in China (which seems to have started on 7th July 2023) leads us to think that it might be related to our recent reporting on the blocking of F-Droid in China in late June 2023. But we also reported on the blocking of Wikipedia in China back in 2019 (among other reports on censorship observed in China), and China did not block our services at the time.

New OONI Explorer features for investigating internet censorship through open data

Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We’re excited to share that OONI Explorer includes new features for investigating internet censorship worldwide based on open data.

Specifically, these features include:

New domain-centric pages;
New network-centric pages;
New “internet outage” charts (integrating IODA, Google traffic, and Cloudflare Radar data), available in each country-specific and network-specific page;
New user feedback reporting mechanism, available through the “Verify” button in the banner of each OONI measurement page.

In this blog post, we share information about these new features.

Job Opening: OONI Project Manager

Tue, 02 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This job posting is now closed. Any applications received after 2023-06-28 will not be considered

Are you a project manager interested in defending human rights on the internet? We have a job opening for you!

The OONI team (a non-profit measuring internet censorship globally) is looking for a dedicated project manager to help us manage our software development work.

We will be reviewing applications on a rolling basis.

Job description

By joining our team, you will help ensure that our software projects are on track, supporting a global community that relies on our tools for measuring and fighting internet censorship.

Brazil: OONI data on the blocking of Telegram

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Encontre a versão em português do relatório localizada pela Coding Rights aqui: https://codingrights.org/library-item/brasil-dados-da-ooni-sobre-o-bloqueio-do-telegram/

Two days ago, on 26th April 2023, Brazil started blocking access to Telegram.

On the same day, a federal judge in Brazil reportedly ordered the temporary suspension of Telegram in response to the messaging service’s alleged failure to share all information on neo-Nazi chat groups requested by the police. This information was reportedly requested as part of a school attacks inquiry, as Brazilian authorities investigate neo-Nazi groups that are believed to have used Telegram to incite school attacks. However, Telegram’s CEO claims (on his Telegram channel) that it’s impossible for them to comply with the order, as the judge requested data that is not feasible for them to obtain.

Throttling of news media amid Kazakhstan’s 2022 presidential election

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Snap presidential elections were held in Kazakhstan in November 2022, following a wave of unrest that started in January 2022. Following the victory of incumbent president Tokayev, early legislative elections were held in March 2023.

Through the analysis of OONI data, we observe the throttling of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Kazakhstan’s service websites in Kazakh and Russian (www.azattyq.org and rus.azattyq.org) in Kazakhstan, starting from 27th September 2022 and lasting until at least 11th April 2023. We also observe the temporary throttling of www.currenttime.tv during Kazakhstan’s 2022 presidential elections.

Introducing OONI Probe Web

Mon, 20 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Today, we are excited to announce the launch of OONI Probe Web: a new browser-based tool for measuring the blocking of websites.

We built OONI Probe Web in response to long-term community feedback, requesting a censorship measurement tool that can be run from a browser, without requiring the installation of any software. Our goal is to support rapid response efforts to emergent censorship events.

However, please note that OONI Probe Web is experimental, and what can be measured from a browser is very limited in comparison to what can be measured from an app. We therefore hope that the use of OONI Probe Web encourages further use of the OONI Probe app for more extensive and accurate testing.

How we're improving OONI data quality: An analysis of failed measurements

Mon, 13 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this blog post, we manually analyse failed OONI measurements to assess why they were classified as such, whether they are symptomatic of censorship, and whether they still carry helpful information for researchers. We focus on measurements from three countries (India, Pakistan, and Indonesia) and outline steps on how we will improve overall data quality.

Background

Web Connectivity is a network test that determines whether a web resource is accessible from the network where the user runs OONI Probe. To this end, Web Connectivity measures accessing the resource and compares the measurement results with another measurement performed by a control vantage point. After the measurement, OONI Probe submits a JSON document summarising its findings and the control vantage point findings to the OONI backend. In turn, the OONI data processing pipeline classifies all Web Connectivity measurements into four categories:

OONI measurements show ongoing internet censorship in Azerbaijan

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Azerbaijan is known to block access to independent news media websites – we previously reported on this in July 2021. At the time, we analyzed OONI measurements collected from Azerbaijan between January 2020 to May 2021 and found that ISPs in Azerbaijan were blocking access to several independent news media and circumvention tool sites. We also found that amid the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, ISPs in Azerbaijan temporarily blocked access to social media services, and attempted to block access to Tor and Psiphon.

How Internet censorship changed in Russia during the 1st year of military conflict in Ukraine

Fri, 24 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Download in PDF

As of today, last year, Russia started its military operation in Ukraine. This was followed by increased levels of internet censorship, as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Russia started blocking access to several news media websites. In early March 2022, OONI published a report documenting these blocks, as well as the blocking of a site (200rf.com) that shares information about captured and killed Russian soldiers in Ukraine. OONI also reported that Russian ISPs started throttling access to Twitter on 26th February 2022, and switched to blocking it by 4th March 2022 – at which point, they also started blocking access to Facebook.

Ethiopia: Ongoing blocking of social media

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

On 9th February 2023, amid church split tensions and calls for anti-government protests, access to social media platforms (TikTok, Facebook, Telegram) was reportedly blocked in Ethiopia. Access Now also published a statement urging authorities in Ethiopia to stop blocking access to social media.

OONI data collected from Ethiopia provides signals of these blocks. Specifically, OONI data shows the ongoing blocking of Facebook and Telegram (since 9th February 2023) and YouTube (since 10th February 2023).

Blocking of Facebook

Pakistan: Blocking of Wikipedia and Deutsche Welle (DW)

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Over the past weeks, access to Wikipedia and Deutsche Welle’s (DW) website was reportedly blocked in Pakistan.

As part of this report, we share OONI data from Pakistan that provides signals of these blocks. Specifically, OONI data shows that access to Wikipedia was temporarily restricted between 1st to 6th February 2023, while access to Deutsche Welle (DW) remains blocked since (at least) 16th January 2023.

Turkey: Throttling and DNS blocking of Twitter following deadly earthquake

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

On 6th February 2023, a devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake (followed by many strong aftershocks) struck (southern and central) Turkey and (northern and western) Syria, resulting in more than 36,000 deaths.

In the aftermath of the earthquake (on 8th February 2023), access to Twitter was reportedly temporarily restricted. OONI data collected from Turkey provides evidence that the block was implemented through targeted throttling and DNS interference.

The following chart aggregates OONI measurement coverage from the testing of Twitter (twitter.com) on multiple networks in Turkey between 9th January 2023 to 9th February 2023.

iMAP 2022: New Research Reports on Internet Censorship in 8 Asian countries

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

On 21st December 2022, our long-term partner, Sinar Project, published 8 new research reports on internet censorship in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong (China) in collaboration with their Internet Monitoring and Action Project (iMAP) partners. We are particularly excited about these reports as they make use of OONI data!

Internet Monitoring Action Project (iMAP) aims to establish regional and in-country networks that monitor network interference and restrictions to the freedom of expression online in 8 countries: Myanmar, Cambodia, Hong Kong (China), Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.

iMAP State of Internet Censorship Report 2022 - Cambodia

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

បកប្រែជាភាសាខ្មែរ

News and other websites are periodically blocked in Cambodia, particularly those that disseminate information that could be perceived as a threat to the ruling government.¹ In July 2018, the government ordered internet service providers (ISPs) to block at least 15 news websites during the country’s election.² In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government has reportedly blocked access to news sites.³ In June 2020, the Ministry of Post telecommunications (MPTC) blocked six online gambling sites.⁴ In November 2021, TRC blocked 79 illegal online gambling websites.⁵ In December 2021, TRC blocked 9 websites and URLs that posted child pornographic images and videos.⁶ In February 2022, TRC blocked 15 illegal lottery websites.⁷

iMAP State of Internet Censorship Report 2022 - Hong Kong

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hong Kong, a place geographically conjunct to the soil of Mainland China, has been previously known as a free society, endured and still enduring multiple historical occasions. Once, there was no nationwide internet censorship until the latest development that local authorities and Beijing forcefully implemented the Hong Kong national security law in late June 2020. Currently, at least four websites are known to be censored, and a few ongoing discussions among pro-Beijing parties and the government to put censorship up on instant messaging and social platforms.

iMAP State of Internet Censorship Report 2022 - Indonesia

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In July 2014, Regulation of the Minister of Communications and Informatics Number 19 of 2014 on the Handling of Negative Internet Sites came into force as part of the regulator’s programme for Healthy and Safe Internet (INSAN or Internet Sehat dan Aman). The law mandated ISPs to block any internet content that is deemed to carry “negative” elements such as pornography, hoaxes, or SARA conflicts.
As of September 2022, the Indonesian Ministry of Information and Communication (Kominfo) has blocked over 1,000,000 websites through TrustPositif,¹ a filtering application that has been operational since 2010 per Ministerial Regulation No 19 of 2014.

iMAP State of Internet Censorship Report 2022 - Malaysia

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

It is a codified guarantee that the internet will not be censored except for illegal, obscene and indecent content, while in reality the extent of censorship and its implementation are wider than projected and remain to be explored.

Diterjemah ke dalam bahasa Melayu

The Ministry of Communications and Multimedia (MCMC) do not publish list of blocked sites, however statements were released from time to time to announce the number of sites blocked. It was revealed that 2,195 websites promoting online gambling were blocked as of March 2021.¹ Between 2020 to July 2021, 960 phishing sites were blocked.² From 2018 to September 2021, 4,068 pornography sites were blocked by MCMC.³

iMAP State of Internet Censorship Report 2022 - Myanmar

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

မြန်မာဘာသာသို့ ပြန်ဆိုပါသည်။

Blocking of independent New Media. 112 out of 2,130 websites were detected 1,473 confirmed blocking counts through 6 local vantages under DNS level interference and HTTP level interference. There were 11 out of 31 websites’ categories from OONI were found as confirmed blocking. Among 11 categories, News Media was experiential as the highest confirmed blocking measurement, following to pornography to the second largest blocking counts. Interestingly, within 117 government websites, OONI detects 15 websites were blocked from 2 vantage points of 2 ISPs.
Sign of internet outages: IODA and Google Traffic data indicate that no major internet connectivity outages have been reported between January 1, 2022, and June 30, 2022. However, on May 16, 2022, and May 20, 2022, there were alerts regarding an Internet disruption and a possible internet outage.
Potential blocking of Instant Messaging Apps: Apart from this finding period, we found no confirmed blocking in Facebook Messengers, Signal, and Telegram. In spite of this, Facebook Messenger found a large volume of anomalies during the test, which could be a sign of possible blocking. WhatsApp also detected a sign of potential blockings.
Circumvention Tools: Circumvention tools appear to be blocked after the coup. As part of this study, Psiphon and Tor circumvention tools were detected accessible across the local networks.

Introduction

iMAP State of Internet Censorship Report 2022 - Philippines

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In recent years, and with the COVID-19 pandemic increasing people’s reliance on digital technologies and with it the role of ICT regulators, agencies such as the NTC have come under fire for the “politicization” of the country’s telecommunications sector.¹ This was most apparent under the administration of former president Rodrigo Duterte, whose six-year presidency was marred by the systematic undermining of democratic institutions and countless attacks against critical media and activists.

iMAP State of Internet Censorship Report 2022 - Thailand

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Thailand, a country situated on the mainland of Southeast Asia, was under military junta for five years from 2014 to 2019. Upon the general election in 2019, the country has been nominally a parliamentary constitutional monarchy, although with lèse-majesté laws continuing to be invoked especially with regard to internet censorship. Adding the COVID-19 pandemic into the picture, the Thai government introduced Regulation 29 to curb fake news, which led to reported incidences of internet censorship.

iMAP State of Internet Censorship Report 2022 - Vietnam

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Swedish Ambassador to Vietnam Pereric Högberg affirmed that Vietnam is making good use of opportunities from the internet, being one of the leading countries in Southeast Asia in terms of internet connection and development¹. Vietnam is not limited to using the Internet and social networks². However, there are still websites with controlled access in Vietnam.

Dịch sang tiếng Việt

Under the authoritarian political system, freedom of assembly, association, expression, press and religion, as well as civil society activism, is tightly restricted and controlled by the party despite legislation recognising civil and political rights in the Constitution.³ Certain contents and topics related to curtailing political opposition, unfavourable to the party, corruption, and human rights issues are censored in various ways.

Year in Review: OONI in 2022

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

As the end of 2022 approaches, we publish this post to share some OONI highlights from the last year. We also share some of the things we’ll be working on in 2023!

OONI Community Video

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We are happy to celebrate OONI’s 10th anniversary together with our amazing community, who have been at the heart of our work over the past decade.

Today, we are excited to share a new video with OONI community members, where they discuss how OONI has been useful to their work, while sharing what they would like to see OONI do in the future.

Featured community members and partners

Andrés Azpúrua, Venezuela Inteligente

Andrés is the co-founder and Director of Venezuela Inteligente, a non-profit organization that aims to facilitate information, communication and collaboration between citizens and civil society organizations to create impact from a non-partisan perspective. They promote, facilitate and develop digital tools, improving access to information, collaboration and responsiveness, empowering organizations, activists and citizens. They fight for the rights of Venezuelans online and offline.

Highlights: 10 Years of OONI

Mon, 05 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Today is OONI’s 10th anniversary!

As of today, 10 years ago, the first OONI measurement was published. Today, 10 years later, more than a billion OONI measurements have been published, shedding light on internet censorship worldwide.

In this post, we share some OONI highlights from the past 10 years, as well as some of our future plans.

You can start off by getting a glimpse of “OONI in 10 years” through the following animation, which shares some highlights from the past decade.

Technical multi-stakeholder report on Internet shutdowns: The case of Iran amid autumn 2022 protests

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Coordinators: OONI, ISOC
Contributors: OONI, IODA, Measurement Lab (M-Lab), Cloudflare, Kentik, Censored Planet, ISOC, Article19
Facilitators: European Commission, United States

Download in PDF

This report shares empirical technical findings on the recent Internet shutdown events that emerged in Iran following the death of Jhina (Mahsa) Amini in September 2022. The report is intended to be the first among a series of multi-stakeholder reports aimed at shedding light on what is becoming a widespread and increasingly sophisticated practice of certain governments around the world. The stakeholders participating in the report share a concern about the global trend in Internet shutdowns, but are contributing to the analysis only on the basis of their technical expertise.

Join the 10th Ooniversary Events!

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

You’re invited to join us for the celebration of OONI’s 10th anniversary!

To share OONI highlights from the last 10 years, as well as how community members have used OONI tools and data as part of their work, we’ll be hosting 2 live-streamed events:

OONI Highlights:
- Date and time: 5th December 2022 at 14:00 UTC (1 hour event)
- Location: Live-streamed on OONI YouTube channel

Survey: Help shape OONI’s strategic priorities

Thu, 20 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

OONI will celebrate its 10th anniversary on 5th December 2022!

This is a time for celebration, but also a time for reflection: What worked well? What should we improve? What should we do differently going forward?

The OONI community has been at the heart of our work over the past decade, and so we invite our community to help shape OONI’s strategic priorities for the future.

Please take a few minutes to complete our survey: https://ooni.typeform.com/2022-survey

New online OONI training course launched by Advocacy Assembly

Mon, 03 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We are excited to share that a free, online OONI training course (“Measuring Internet Censorship with OONI tools”) has been launched today on Small Media’s Advocacy Assembly platform!

Through this course, you will learn how to measure internet censorship through the use of OONI tools. You will also learn how to access and interpret real-time OONI data on internet censorship around the world.

Today, the course is available in English, Arabic, Spanish, and Farsi. Over the next months, the course will also be available in French, Swahili, Portuguese and Russian.

Iran blocks social media, app stores and encrypted DNS amid Mahsa Amini protests

Sun, 25 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Protests erupted in Iran over the last week following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who was reportedly beaten to death by Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating strict hijab rules. Amid the ongoing protests, which have reportedly resulted in at least 31 civilian deaths, Iranian authorities cracked down on the internet in an attempt to curb dissent.

Over the past week, Iran experienced severe mobile network outages, in addition to increased levels of internet censorship. In this report, we share OONI network measurement findings from Iran on the blocking of WhatsApp, Instagram, Linkedin, Skype, Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and encrypted DNS (DNS over HTTPS). We also share IODA and Cloudflare Radar data on mobile network outages over the last few days.

Azerbaijan and Armenia block TikTok amid border clashes

Fri, 16 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier this week, on 12th September 2022, fighting erupted between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops along their border. Over the next few days, community members in Azerbaijan reported that the TikTok app was blocked locally.

We analyzed OONI network measurement data to investigate the block. We found that TikTok has been blocked in both Azerbaijan and Armenia over the last few days.

In this report, we share our technical findings. In both Armenia and Azerbaijan, we found TLS and DNS level interference of TikTok domains and endpoints during the border clashes.

New Test Lists Editor: Contribute websites for censorship testing

Fri, 29 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Today the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) team is excited to announce the public launch of our new Test Lists Editor!

This platform enables the public to review and contribute to the lists of websites (“test lists”) that are tested for censorship by OONI Probe users around the world.

Help the internet freedom community discover website blocks around the world by contributing through the new Test Lists Editor!

Measuring DoT/DoH Blocking Using OONI Probe: A Preliminary Study

Fri, 17 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

When you enter a URL such as https://example.com/, under the hood, your web browser resolves the example.com domain to one or more IP addresses using the Domain Name System (DNS), a set of federated servers and protocols providing this name-to-IP-address mapping. For example, as of 2022-06-16, example.com resolves to the 93.184.216.34 (IPv4) and 2606:2800:220:1:248:1893:25c8:1946 (IPv6) addresses. Once it knows the IP addresses for the domain, the browser then uses them to fetch the requested webpage. Conceptually, the browser tries the IP addresses in sequence until it finds one that works. If no returned IP address works, the request fails. Therefore, domain name lookups are key to browsing and, incidentally, are also key to website censorship and surveillance.

A Quick Look at QUIC Censorship

Thu, 16 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post was originally published by the Open Technology Fund to disseminate Kathrin Elmenhorst’s QUIC-and-HTTP/3 censorship research as part of her ICFP fellowship with OONI.

Last year, the new network protocol QUIC was introduced. QUIC is a general-purpose transport layer network with the goal of reducing latency compared to existing protocols. Since the introduction of QUIC, we have seen rising volumes of QUIC-based web traffic in the form of HTTP/3.

As QUIC usage increases, it has become the target of censorship efforts. From the perspective of censors, the emergence of QUIC and HTTP/3 means two things:

OONI’s submission for the OHCHR report on internet shutdowns and human rights

Wed, 15 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Currently, the 50th session of the UN Human Rights Council is taking place.

In response to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’s call for submissions in support of the OHCHR report on internet shutdowns and human rights to the 50th session of the Human Rights Council in June 2022, the OONI team provided a submission with relevant information on the occurrence of mandated disruptions of access to social media and messaging platforms over the past 5 years based on empirical OONI network measurement data.

Job Opening: OONI Community Coordinator

Fri, 13 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Are you passionate about defending human rights on the internet? Are you extremely organized and enjoy supporting communities around the world? We have a job opening for you!

The OONI team (a non-profit fighting internet censorship) is looking for a dedicated community coordinator to help grow and support the OONI community around the world.

The application deadline is Sunday, 12th June 2022.

Job description

By joining our team, you will support our partners and global community of human rights defenders to measure and fight internet censorship. Our community is at the heart of our work, and you will play an important role in helping to ensure that our tools meet the needs of our community.

New Launch: OONI Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT)

Tue, 12 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Today the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) team is thrilled to announce the public launch of the OONI Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT)!

The MAT is a tool that enables you to create your own custom charts based on aggregate views of real-time OONI data collected from around the world.

Use the MAT to track internet censorship worldwide based on real-time OONI data!

About the MAT
- What is OONI data?

New blocks emerge in Russia amid war in Ukraine: An OONI network measurement analysis

Mon, 07 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Download in PDF

Information controls are known to occur during conflicts, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing in Russia following the recent invasion of Ukraine on 24th February 2022.

In recent days, OONI network measurement data collected from Russia shows that many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have started blocking access to several news media websites, as well as to a website (200rf.com) that shares information about captured and killed Russian soldiers in Ukraine. OONI data also shows that Russian ISPs started throttling access to Twitter on 26th February 2022, and switched to blocking it by 4th March 2022 – at which point, they also started blocking access to Facebook. Censorship in Russia is generally implemented in a decentralized way, as blocks are not observed on all networks, while ISPs adopt a variety of different censorship techniques.

Measuring HTTP/3 censorship with OONI Probe

Wed, 19 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Last year, QUIC emerged as a new internet protocol for creating reliable connections and encrypting communications between clients over the new HTTP/3 protocol. Observing the emergence and growing deployment of HTTP/3, we want to enable OONI Probe to measure HTTP/3 censorship and monitor how censors respond and adapt to technical innovation.

We therefore added HTTP/3 support (in early 2021) into OONI Probe (through our urlgetter research tool) to conduct measurements in China, Iran, India and Kazakhstan to investigate the state of HTTP/3 censorship in these countries.

Year in Review: OONI in 2021

Mon, 27 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In light of the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, 2021 continued to be a challenging year for everyone.

Yet, several exciting things happened in the censorship measurement world. In this post, we share some OONI highlights from 2021, as well as some upcoming OONI projects for 2022!

OONI Probe

iThena integration of OONI Probe boosts censorship measurement coverage worldwide

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last months, the iThena project integrated OONI Probe into their platform, resulting in a major spike in OONI censorship measurement coverage around the world.

In this blog post, we’re excited to introduce you to iThena and discuss how they helped support censorship measurement worldwide.

About iThena

iThena, developed by the Cyber-Complex Foundation, is a distributed computation and measurement project based on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) platform. iThena aims to generate a dynamic topological model of the Internet, based on measurements from distributed devices.

Russia started blocking Tor

Fri, 17 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

On 1st December 2021, some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Russia started blocking access to the Tor anonymity network.

In this report, we share OONI network measurement data on the blocking of the Tor network and www.torproject.org in Russia.

About Tor

If you want real privacy and anonymity on the internet, the answer is simple: use Tor.

[Event Report] India, Let's Build the List

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This is a guest post by The Bachchao Project, originally published here.

The Bachchao Project in partnership with OONI hosted an online event on 9th and 10th October 2021 to update the Citizen Lab test list for India. The event, which was called “India, Lets build the list”, was organised to help strengthen community based monitoring of internet censorship in India. The event allowed experts from different fields to contribute to a curated list of websites that are relevant to India and which are regularly tested for censorship by volunteers in India.

Why Collaboration and Transparency is Key to Internet Measurement

Tue, 30 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This post was originally published on the Internet Society Pulse blog.

With Internet shutdowns, disruptions and censorship events on the increase around the world, tracking where such events are happening and gathering evidence to help in the fight against them is becoming more and more important.

Tracking these events is crucial because of the impact they have on society and the economy. When social media apps are blocked, for example, freedom of speech, access to information, and movement-building is hampered. When access to the Internet is shut down completely, people may not have access to vital services or be able to work and study.

A multi-perspective view of Internet censorship in Myanmar

Thu, 11 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In the wake of a military coup in February 2021, Myanmar experienced unprecedented levels of internet censorship.

In response, we collaborated with CAIDA’s Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) team and Myanmar ICT for Development Organization (MIDO) on publishing a research report which documents a series of nightly internet outages and the blocking of social media, Wikipedia, and circumvention tool sites in Myanmar following the military coup.

In the months that followed, we continued to examine internet censorship in Myanmar quite closely. We collaborated with IODA, Kentik, and other researchers from UC San Diego and the University of Michigan to expand our analysis. We used diverse datasets and measurement methods to offer a holistic view into the censorship events in Myanmar that occurred since the coup and show how internet censorship evolved between 1st February 2021 to 30th April 2021.

Investigating Internet shutdowns through Mozilla telemetry

Mon, 08 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

More than 200 million users worldwide use the Firefox web browser (developed by Mozilla) every month.

If access to the Internet is shut down in a country, Mozilla should expect to see a dramatic drop in Firefox usage from that country. Given how widespread the use of Firefox is around the world, could Mozilla telemetry be a valuable resource for the Internet freedom community to investigate Internet shutdowns?

To explore this question, the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) and Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) teams joined forces to analyze a dataset of potential outage signals gathered through regular Mozilla telemetry, access to which was provided by Mozilla as part of a relevant research project to validate assumptions about the data.

How countries attempt to block Signal Private Messenger App around the world

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Signal Private Messenger, commonly used by human rights defenders worldwide, is widely considered the state-of-the-art app for private and secure communications. But as its popularity surged recently, we have started to observe its blocking in several countries.

In this report, we share our analysis of OONI network measurement data on the blocking of the Signal Private Messenger app in Iran, China, Cuba, and Uzbekistan.

Currently, circumvention is enabled by default for Signal users in Iran, Egypt, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE. If Signal users in other countries are unable to use the app, they can enable the “Censorship Circumvention” setting on iOS. On Android, Signal blocking can be circumvented through the use of Signal TLS proxies.

Job Opening: Mobile Developer for OONI Probe

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Are you a mobile developer interested in defending human rights on the internet? We have a job opening for you!

The OONI team (a non-profit fighting internet censorship, originally born out of the Tor Project) is looking for a dedicated mobile developer to work on OONI Probe: a free software app designed to measure internet censorship and network performance.

The application deadline is Sunday, 31st October 2021.

Job description

If you join our team, you will lead the development of the OONI Probe mobile app, supporting human rights defenders worldwide to investigate and fight internet censorship.

Italy blocks Gutenberg book publishing website

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Cases of internet censorship (that affect public interest) are rarely reported in Europe. Yet, www.gutenberg.org, a book-publishing website run by a non-profit organization, has been blocked in Italy since May 2020.

In this report, we share OONI network measurement data on the ongoing blocking of www.gutenberg.org across networks in Italy.

No Access: LGBTIQ Website Censorship in Six Countries

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Today, in collaboration with OutRight Action International and the Citizen Lab, we are excited to share our new research report, “No Access: LGBTIQ Website Censorship in Six Countries”, which examines the blocking of LGBTIQ websites in Indonesia, Malaysia, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

READ FULL REPORT

Annotated Bibliography

Below we share some of our key research findings.

Summary of findings

We joined forces with OutRight Action International and the Citizen Lab to examine the blocking of LGBTIQ websites in six countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). We selected these countries because they are (a) known to serve block pages (i.e., pages that website visitors may see when access is restricted), which enable us to automatically confirm the blocking of LGBTIQ websites, and (b) known to censor LGBTIQ related content, based on prior research.

A brief introduction to OONI

Tue, 24 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This is gentle introduction to OONI that does not require readers to have a technical background.

If you are familiar with how the Internet works and how it can be censored you can skip The basics.

For frequently asked questions and answers, please refer to the OONI FAQ.

The basics

You might be connecting to the Internet from a local network or using an Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Accessing OONI data

Tue, 24 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This page has moved to: https://docs.ooni.org/data/

Zambia: Social media blocked amid 2021 general elections

Tue, 24 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, on 12th August 2021, general elections were held in Zambia, during which access to popular online social media platforms was reportedly blocked.

In this report, we share relevant OONI data on the blocking of WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook amid Zambia’s 2021 general election.

Background

While Zambia hasn’t experienced pervasive forms of internet censorship (such as the blocking of popular social media apps) over the last years, various forms of censorship have been reported in the country.

OONI Partner Training 2021

Wed, 07 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last week, we had the pleasure to host two 3-day OONI Partner Training events for our partners in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia. As part of these events, our goal was to share OONI-specific knowledge and skills, and to collect feedback to better serve community needs.

In this post, we share information about the training events.

Media censorship in Azerbaijan through the lens of network measurement

Fri, 02 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Key Findings

As part of our analysis of OONI measurements collected from Azerbaijan between January 2020 to May 2021, we found:

Making the OONI Probe Android app more resilient

Thu, 27 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

We recently made OONI Probe Android more robust against accidental or deliberate blocking of our backend services. Specifically, we implemented support for specifying a proxy that speaks with OONI’s backend services. We also improved the build process to influence the TLS Client Hello fingerprint, which helps with avoiding accidental blocking.

Adding support for a proxy

Since late 2020, community members have been reporting specific OONI Probe Android failures. The symptom is that all tests fail with the “all available probe services failed” error. This issue has been publicly documented, for example, in ooni/probe#1324. The following screenshot shows what a user would see under this specific error condition.

Myanmar: Data on internet blocks and internet outages following military coup

Tue, 09 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

On 1st February 2021, the military in Myanmar carried out a coup d’etat, seizing power and detaining the country’s State Counsellor (equivalent to a prime minister) and other democratically elected leaders.

A few days after the coup, ISPs in Myanmar started blocking access to Facebook services. On 5th February 2021, they started blocking access to Twitter and Instagram as well. On 6th February 2021, access to the internet was shut down entirely for nearly 30 hours. When internet connectivity was restored, social media blocks remained in place and they are currently ongoing. Since 15th February 2021, access to the internet has been shut down every night (between around 1am to 9am local time) in Myanmar. More recently, some ISPs in Myanmar appear to have started blocking access to Wikipedia as well.

Uganda: Data on internet blocks and nationwide internet outage amid 2021 general election

Fri, 22 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Last week, amid its 2021 general election, Uganda was disconnected from the internet entirely. The country experienced a widespread internet blackout that lasted 4 days, starting on the eve of the election (13th January 2021) and ending in the morning of 18th January 2021. In the days leading up to the election, access to major social media platforms and circumvention tools was blocked – even when the OTT (Over the Top) tax (commonly referred to as the “Social Media Tax”) was paid.

Year in Review: OONI in 2020

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In light of the global COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 has been a challenging year for everyone.

Yet, several exciting things happened in the censorship measurement world. In this post, we share some OONI highlights from 2020, as well as some upcoming OONI projects for 2021!

Investigating Encrypted DNS Blocking in India

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In October 2020, we collaborated with Divyank Katira and Gurshabad Grover, researchers at the Centre for Internet & Society, India, to implement and evaluate a new OONI experiment focused on detecting DNS censorship.

This new OONI experiment, called dnscheck, focuses on detecting the blocking of encrypted DNS transports such as DNS over TLS and DNS over HTTPS. Its methodology improves upon the measurement methodology OONI previously used to measure DoT blocking in Iran.

The implementation, written by Divyank Katira, is currently only available to users of the miniooni research client. We are however planning on promoting the dsncheck experiment as a first class experiment that will run by default as part of the “websites” experiments group.

Tanzania blocks social media (and Tor?) on election day

Wed, 28 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Starting from yesterday (27th October 2020) – on the eve of Tanzania’s 2020 general election – OONI measurements continue to show the ongoing blocking of social media (and of the Tor circumvention tool) in Tanzania.

In this report, we share OONI data collected from Tanzania on these blocks, as well as relevant instructions for further OONI Probe testing.

OONI Probe ASN Incident Report

Fri, 09 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Last week we noticed that some OONI measurements were available on OONI Explorer under a report ID containing a valid Autonomous System Number (ASN), even though the raw JSON data contained zero as the ASN (i.e. encoded as AS0). We initially thought that this was caused by a bug in our API code, but it actually turned out to be an OONI Probe bug in our probe engine (which powers the OONI Probe apps).

Please update your OONI Probe mobile app to the latest version (2.7.0), which fixes this bug. If you are an OONI Probe desktop app user and prefer not to share your network ASN, please refrain from running tests until we have released a fix for OONI Probe desktop (hopefully this will be possible next week).

Belarus protests: From internet outages to pervasive website censorship

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Image: Block page served in Belarus.

This report was prepared in collaboration with Human Constanta and the Digital Observers Community Belarus.

More than 70 websites have been blocked in Belarus over the last weeks, following a controversial presidential election and amid ongoing anti-government protests. Many of the blocked sites include news media and are related to the elections, while several other sites expressing political criticism were blocked as well. At the time of writing, many of these sites remain blocked in Belarus.

Internet Measurement Village 2020: Slides & Video Recordings

Mon, 27 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last month, between 10th June 2020 to 3rd July 2020, we organized and hosted the Internet Measurement Village (IMV) 2020, an online community event aimed at sharing skills, knowledge, and resources on internet measurement, in defense of a free and open internet.

As all the IMV sessions were live-streamed and will continue to live on the OONI YouTube channel, we hope that these recordings will serve as a valuable resource on internet measurement for the internet freedom community.

Support the OTF: Support a Free and Open Internet

Wed, 22 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last month, the Open Technology Fund (OTF) – one of the main funders of free censorship circumvention and privacy-enhancing technologies that human rights defenders worldwide rely on – has been under threat, following the ousting of its leadership.

We previously published a statement in support of the OTF, explaining why we think the OTF is essential for internet freedom and encouraging the public to sign the letter to congress.

In this post, we share our experience working with the OTF, and discuss how they have played a crucial role in supporting the fight against internet censorship worldwide.

Measurement observations on network performance during the COVID-19 pandemic in Northern Italy

Fri, 17 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We were recently invited to participate in a NetGain Partnership webinar (titled “Surging Demand and The Global Internet Infrastructure”) to discuss the changing landscape for internet infrastructure and technology in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As part of our preparation for this webinar, we looked at network performance measurements collected from northern Italy over the last months (i.e. when Italy was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic) in an attempt to understand whether and to what extent there was a correlation between increased internet use and reduced network performance. As our observations may be of public interest, we decided to share them through this blog post.

Investigating TLS blocking in India

Wed, 08 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This report investigates Transport Layer Security (TLS)-based blocking in India. Previous research by the Centre for Internet & Society, India (CIS) has already exposed TLS blocking based on the value of the SNI field. OONI has also implemented and started testing SNI-based TLS blocking measurements.

Recently, the Magma Project documented cases where CIS India and OONI’s methodologies could be improved. They specifically found that blocking sometimes appears to depend not only on the value of the SNI field but also on the address of the web server being used. These findings were later confirmed by OONI measurements in Spain and Iran through the use of an extended measurement methodology.

Azərbaycan: OONI Probe Test üçün çağırış

Thu, 25 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This is a guest post by Arzu Geybullayeva (Azerbaijan Internet Watch), originally published here.

Azerbaijan Internet Watch Azərbaycanda internet senzurasını izləyir və bu çərçəvədə aşkar etdiyi pozuntuları öz səhifəsində sənədləşdirir. Bu barədə daha ətraflı məlumatı buradan əldə edə bilərsiniz.

Layihənin bir vacib cəhətlərindən biri də ölkədə bloklanan veb səhifələri izləmək ve bu bloklamaların necə baş verdiyini araşdırmaqdır. Bu barədə isə daha ətraflı buradan və buradan məlumat əldə edə bilərsiniz.

Gördüyünüz kimi, bu testleri aparmaq üçün Azerbaijan Internet Watch OONI ilə əməkdaşlıq edir. OONI dünyada internet senzurasının şəffaflığını artırmağı hədəfləyən layihədir.

DNS over TLS blocked in Iran

Wed, 24 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

DNS over TLS (DoT) is a network protocol that allows one to use DNS over TLS (i.e. with encryption and authentication of the remote DNS server).

We investigated whether DoT works in Iran by gathering a list of 31 well-known DoT endpoints and running experiments from four distinct Iranian mobile and fixed-line Internet Service Providers (ISPs): MCI, TCI, Irancell, and Shatel.

We discovered that:

57% of the endpoints are blocked on a least one ISP;
the blocking is not implemented uniformly across ISPs;

Save Internet Freedom: Support the Open Technology Fund

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 16:48:11 +0000

Last Wednesday was dubbed as a “Wednesday night massacre”, following the firing of the directors of four organizations overseen by the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM): Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Middle East Broadcasting, and the Open Technology Fund (OTF).

Out of these four organizations, we would like to draw your attention to the OTF, not only because they have been a long-term funder of our project but, more importantly, because they have been essential in creating the internet freedom community as we know it.

Those Unspoken Thoughts: A study of censorship and media freedom in Manipur, India

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This research report was produced by OTF Information Controls Fellow, Chinmayi S K. OONI served as her host organization throughout her fellowship.

Read full report

The northeastern Indian state of Manipur has long been an area of conflict and crackdowns. But although human rights violations are well documented in the state, few studies have examined the impact of censorship and internet shutdowns in the region. In 2019, research fellow Chinmayi S K sought to address this critical gap by documenting the blocking of websites in Manipur and assessing how the use of information controls in the state compares to that in the rest of India. Of particular note, the in-depth research project studied the impact of online censorship on the identities, livelihoods, and activities of womxn living in Manipur.

OONI Run Usability Study: Findings

Tue, 09 Jun 2020 09:38:02 +0000

OONI Run is a platform (launched in September 2017) that you can use to generate mobile deep links and widget code to coordinate OONI Probe testing. To enable community members to more effectively use OONI Run, we researched its limitations and collected structured community feedback through an OONI Run usability study.

This report outlines the objectives, personas, assumptions, and methods of this study.

We also share the outcomes based on the analysis of information collected through our survey and interviews with community members, as well as some of the next steps towards improving OONI Run.

Join the online Internet Measurement Village 2020

Fri, 05 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are excited to bring the first online Internet Measurement Village to you this month.

Interested in learning all about Internet measurement and how to detect Internet censorship? Curious to explore open datasets on Internet censorship and Internet outages? Eager to learn how advocates are pushing back against Internet shutdowns and defending a free and open Internet?

Join us for the online Internet Measurement Village, starting on Wednesday, 10th June 2020 and ending on Friday, 3rd July 2020.

Evaluating OONI’s New Measurement Engine in the Context of the Blocking of Women on Web in Spain

Wed, 27 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Reproduction rights site www.womenonweb.org has been blocked in Spain over the last months by several local Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Once Spanish hacktivist communities noticed that www.womenonweb.org was inaccessible, they coordinated on running OONI Probe tests to collect measurement data that could serve as evidence. The findings of this investigation have been published in an excellent report, whose writing was coordinated by our former colleague, Vasilis Ververis.

We were involved in the technical review of the report. We found their methodology particularly interesting. They used the OONI Web Connectivity experiment along with OONI’s experimental SNI based blocking methodology, and they also performed manual experiments with OpenSSL and cURL. Because OONI’s mission is to simplify and automate the collection of censorship evidence, we are always interested in learning how we can expand our Web Connectivity methodology to automatically gather more data that is useful in specific cases. Coincidentally, as part of rewriting the Web Connectivity implementation in Go, we have already written experimental code that combines vanilla Web Connectivity with SNI blocking and other techniques. We therefore asked them to run this experimental code with www.womenonweb.org as a target. Our goal was to evaluate whether our working prototype would have allowed them to obtain the same research results, without resorting to manually running specifically tailored network experiments.

Burundi blocks social media amid 2020 general election

Thu, 21 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday, access to social media was reportedly blocked in Burundi amid its 2020 general election.

The lead-up to the election was marred by violence and unrest, as seven candidates vied to replace Incumbent President Nkurunziza, who has been in power over the last 15 years. Despite widespread deadly protests and a coup attempt, President Nkurunziza won a third term in 2015 following disputed elections. While President Nkurunziza reportedly announced that he would not contest the next elections, he is set to become a “supreme guide to patriotism” as he steps down now in 2020.

Myanmar blocks “fake news” websites amid COVID-19 pandemic

Wed, 06 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In March 2020, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Myanmar received a directive from the Ministry of Transport and Communications to block 230 websites, most of which contain adult content. However, 67 of these sites were blocked on the grounds of spreading “fake news”. The list of these 230 websites has not been published.

In an attempt to potentially identify the newly blocked websites, we analyzed OONI network measurements collected from Myanmar over the last months, between 1st January 2020 to 9th April 2020.

Measuring SNI based blocking in Iran

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In this blog post we start evaluating OONI’s new SNI blocking experiment. To this end, we will use measurements performed in Iran, where the blocking technique measured by this experiment is deployed.

OONI’s SNI blocking experiment discovers cases where a Client Hello packet carrying a specific SNI triggers blocking. In this context, SNI means Server Name Indication. It is an extension to the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol that allows a client to specify the domain name that it wants an HTTP server to serve. This extension is used in many TLS use cases. For example, when you access https://www.google.com with your browser, the code will send a Client Hello packet containing the string www.google.com in the SNI extension.

OONI Run Survey & Interviews: Share your feedback

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

OONI Run is a platform that you can use to generate mobile deep links and widget code to coordinate OONI Probe testing.

Researchers and human rights defenders around the world have used OONI Run to coordinate OONI Probe censorship measurement campaigns, particularly leading up to and during political events (such as elections and protests).

We’re excited to hear more about your experience with OONI Run so that we can improve it.

Launched: New OONI Probe Desktop App for Windows and macOS

Tue, 21 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Today, OONI is thrilled to announce the public launch of the new OONI Probe desktop app that you can download and install on Windows and macOS to measure internet censorship and network performance.

Install OONI Probe Desktop app

By running the tests in the new OONI Probe desktop app, you can measure:

Blocking of websites;
Blocking of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram;
Blocking of Tor and Psiphon;
Presence of systems (“middleboxes”) that could potentially be responsible for censorship and/or surveillance;

Building a smart URL list system: Policy for URL prioritization

Wed, 15 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

To improve the monitoring of website censorship around the world, OONI aims to create a smart URL list system, while ensuring, to the extent possible, the safety of the URL lists themselves by running them through the usual Citizen Lab URL review process. This will help ensure smarter test target selection and by extension, it will enable us – and the broader internet freedom community – to more effectively monitor, analyze, and respond to cases of website censorship around the world.

Let's measure the accessibility of COVID-19 websites around the world

Mon, 23 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Ensuring a free and open internet during an emergency, like the current COVID-19 pandemic, is more important than ever. However, access to information related to the coronavirus pandemic has already been censored by certain governments. China censored information on the coronavirus on Chinese social media platforms, while Venezuela’s state-owned CANTV blocked access to a coronavirus information portal last week.

We therefore invite you to participate in a measurement campaign to check if COVID-19 sites are accessible in your country (and on the network you’re using) and to share relevant measurement data with the world.

Year in Review: OONI in 2019

Fri, 20 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

As the new decade begins, we publish this post to share some OONI highlights from 2019. We also share some thoughts for 2020.

Iran temporarily blocks the Farsi language edition of Wikipedia

Wed, 04 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last days, between 2nd to 3rd March 2020, OONI measurements collected from 6 different networks in Iran showed that access to the Farsi edition of Wikipedia (fa.wikipedia.org) was temporarily blocked by means of DNS tampering and SNI filtering.

In this post, we share relevant OONI data.

Blocking of Farsi Wikipedia and Wikinews

In the past, Iran mainly blocked the HTTP version of specific Wikipedia articles. But over the last years, this probably wasn’t very noticeable because Wikipedia used HTTPS with HSTS enabled, meaning that Iranian internet users could easily access the censored pages.

OONI Highlights: 2017-2019

Mon, 02 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This post was originally published on the OTF website.

Back in 2012, the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) was born with OTF support to create the first open methodologies that would enable anyone around the world to measure internet censorship and other forms of network interference.

Today, OONI comprises a global community that runs its censorship measurement software (OONI Probe) in more than 200 countries every month. Millions of measurements have been collected from tens of thousands of networks in 236 countries since 2012, all of which are openly published on OONI Explorer – arguably the largest publicly available resource on internet censorship to date.

Togo: Instant messaging apps blocked amid 2020 presidential election

Tue, 25 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Last Saturday, on 22nd February 2020, presidential elections were held in Togo. These elections follow a wave of protests over the last years against the 53-year rule of Gnassingbe Eyadema and, subsequently, his son, Faure Gnassingbe. A few days before the election, non-partisan election monitoring was restricted as National Democratic Institute (NDI) staff were expelled from the country. According to preliminary results from the electoral commission, incumbent President Faure Gnassingbe won re-election.

Amid concerns that the Togolese government would restrict access to the internet during the elections (similarly to other West African countries, such as Benin and The Gambia), Access Now’s KeepItOn campaign published an open letter encouraging the government of Togo to ensure a free and open internet during the election. Access Now also encouraged the use of OONI Probe so that locals in Togo could monitor the accessibility of online sites and services through network measurement.

Call to Action: Let’s measure the blocking of LGBTQI websites around the world!

Wed, 04 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

LGBTQI websites are blocked in several countries around the world, such as Malaysia and Indonesia. This includes popular dating apps and sites, like grindr, which is blocked in Lebanon and Iran.

How can we track the blocking of LGBTQI sites around the world?

We have teamed up with OutRight Action International – a leading international LGBTQI human rights organization – to investigate the blocking of LGBTQI sites worldwide.

We invite you to contribute to this research!

Iran’s nation-wide Internet blackout: Measurement data and technical observations

Sat, 23 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last week, Iran experienced a nation-wide Internet blackout.

Most Iranians were barred from connecting to the global Internet and the outside world, but they had access to Iran’s national Intranet: the domestic network that hosts Iranian websites and services—all under the government’s watch.

This major Internet blackout was rolled out on 16th November 2019, right after protests erupted across multiple cities in Iran. The protests (against economic mismanagement and government corruption) were sparked by the government’s abrupt announcement to increase the price of fuel (as much as 300%) and to impose a strict rationing system. According to Amnesty International, more than 100 protesters are believed to have been killed over the last week, but this figure has been disputed by Iranian authorities. Amid the protests—which began on 15th November 2019 and are ongoing—access to the Internet was reportedly shutdown.

On the blocking of abortion rights websites: Women on Waves & Women on Web

Tue, 29 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Image: By Clarote (Coding Rights)

Read the Portuguese version by Coding Rights.

View the report’s press coverage by The Intercept.

As abortion remains partially or totally criminalized in numerous countries, the fight to promote sexual and reproductive rights, as well as women’s health, also relies on access to information. But recently, we were told that the website of the abortion rights non-governmental organization womeonwaves.org, which provides reproductive health services and education to women in countries with restrictive abortion laws, was inaccessible in Brazil.

Egypt blocks BBC and Alhurra: Expanding media censorship amid political unrest

Thu, 26 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Last weekend, protests erupted in Egypt in response to corruption allegations against President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi’s government.

Protests have been rare since President Sisi took power in 2014, but amid policies of economic austerity and recent corruption allegations, hundreds of Egyptians took to the streets. It was subsequently reported that BBC News and the US-funded Alhurra news website were amongst blocked services. The head of Egypt’s Supreme Council for Media Regulation reportedly stated that the BBC and other news websites may have been blocked because of their “inaccurate” coverage of the protests.

Next Generation OONI Explorer Launched!

Thu, 12 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Today the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) team is thrilled to announce the public launch of the revamped, next generation OONI Explorer!

OONI Explorer is an open data resource on internet censorship around the world. This new platform offers access to millions of censorship measurements collected from 233 countries since 2012.

Resurgence of Internet Censorship in Ethiopia: Blocking of WhatsApp, Facebook, and African Arguments

Wed, 14 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Last year in June 2018, following years of pervasive internet censorship, Ethiopia unblocked hundreds of websites as part of political reforms under a new government. But merely a year later, we observe a resurgence of internet censorship in the country.

In mid-June 2019, Ethiopia experienced several internet blackouts and once internet access was restored, access to WhatsApp and Telegram was blocked. These events coincided with Ethiopia’s national high school exams and it is believed that internet access was restricted in an attempt to prevent exam leakage as has happened in the past.

Ethiopia: From internet blackouts to the blocking of WhatsApp and Telegram

Fri, 21 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Communication access in Ethiopia has significantly been disrupted over the last week. Internet access and Short Message Services (SMS) were disconnected intermittently across the country.

During the first half of the week, internet connectivity was shut down completely. After access was restored, both WhatsApp and Telegram were blocked. A few days ago, Ethio Telecom (the only telecom in the country) published a notice, acknowledging the internet disruptions, but came short on details about the extent of communication disruptions or why they occurred in the first place.

Jordan: Measuring Facebook live-streaming interference during protests

Wed, 12 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Last December, anti-austerity protests erupted in Jordan against a controversial fiscal reform bill. The protests ensued once a week for several weeks thereafter. Amid the protests, locals reported that they were unable to view live-streaming from Facebook. But they also reported that viewing live-streaming was otherwise possible when protests were not taking place.

Therefore, our first hypothesis was that perhaps people in Jordan couldn’t load videos on Facebook because they were using overloaded networks (rather than Facebook live streaming being interfered with).

Nigeria’s 2019 elections through the lens of network measurements

Wed, 29 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Censorship events are increasingly being reported during political events in Africa (and elsewhere around the world). A few examples include the social media disruptions in Mali amid its 2018 presidential election, the blocking of social media in Uganda during its 2016 general elections, and the complete internet blackout in The Gambia during its 2016 presidential election.

Leading up to and during Nigeria’s 2019 general elections, we collaborated with our local partner, Paradigm Initiative, on measuring networks in the country to monitor potential censorship events.

China is now blocking all language editions of Wikipedia

Sat, 04 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

translation: 中国封锁了所有语言版本的维基百科

China recently started blocking all language editions of Wikipedia. Previously, the blocking was limited to the Chinese language edition of Wikipedia (zh.wikipedia.org), but has now expanded to include all *.wikipedia.org language editions.

In this post, we share OONI network measurement data on the blocking of Wikipedia in China. We found that all wikipedia.org sub-domains are blocked in China by means of DNS injection and SNI filtering.

DNS injection

Through the use of OONI Probe, Wikipedia domains have been tested from multiple local vantage points in China since 2015. Most measurements have been collected from China Telecom (AS4134).

Benin: Social media blocking and Internet blackout amid 2019 elections

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Two days ago, social media was reportedly blocked and access to the Internet was shutdown in Benin during its 2019 parliamentary elections.

In this report, the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) and the Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) teams share OONI, IODA, and RIPE Atlas network measurement data that corroborate and provide insight into these recent censorship events in Benin.

Cuba blocks independent media amid 2019 constitutional referendum

Tue, 26 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

On 24th February 2019, Cubans voted on a new constitution for the first time in decades.

But a few hours before the referendum, independent news outlet Tremenda Nota reported that their website got blocked in Cuba.

In this post, we share OONI network measurement data that confirms the blocking of tremendanota.com, as well as the blocking of several other independent media websites during the referendum.

We also found that ETECSA, Cuba’s only telecommunications company, has changed its censorship techniques, now censoring access to sites that support HTTPS by means of IP blocking.

OONI Software Development Guidelines

Sat, 23 Feb 2019 01:00:00 +0000

The goal of this document is to explain and explicit some of the best practices relevant to software development that we follow at the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI).

By following these development guidelines we aim to produce higher quality code, which contains less defects and allows us to iterate more quickly delivering greater value to our end users is a shorter amount of time!

Version control

Also known as: “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Git!”

OONI Probe Android 2.0.0 Incident Report

Fri, 22 Feb 2019 23:00:00 +0000

The first public release of OONI Probe Android 2.0.0 (since 2.0.0-alpha.7) included a very serious bug: we lost measurements and collected measurements that we shouldn’t have. As soon as the problem was identified, we quickly released a fix (OONI Probe Android 2.0.1). All measurements that should not have been uploaded have been deleted and we are working on a new OONI Probe release (OONI Probe Mobile 2.1.0) that will allow you to manually re-upload measurements. No other OONI Probe platforms (iOS, [macOS](https://ooni.io/install/OONI Probe), [Linux](https://ooni.io/install/OONI Probe), Lepidopter) were affected.

From the blocking of Wikipedia to Social Media: Venezuela's Political Crisis

Tue, 29 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

As political tension escalated in Venezuela over the last few weeks, so did internet censorship.

It started off with edits to Wikipedia pages earlier this month, referencing the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, as the President of Venezuela. This resulted in the blocking of Wikipedia. Then a group of Venezuelan soldiers circulated videos, announcing an uprising against the government of President Maduro and calling on the public to join them in the streets. This led to the temporary blocking of YouTube, Twitter and Instagram on the same day. During last week’s anti-government protests (where Juan Guaidó swore himself in as interim president), further network anomalies were reported. All cases were only observed on CANTV (AS8084), Venezuela’s state-owned and largest telecommunication service.

Zimbabwe protests: Social media blocking and internet blackouts

Wed, 23 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Last week, protests erupted in Zimbabwe in response to the government’s announcement that the price of fuel would more than double. According to Zimbabwe’s government, the price hikes aim to avert fuel shortages and to crackdown on the illegal trading of fuel. The new prices, however, mean that Zimbabwe now has the most expensive fuel in the world.

Zimbabwe’s fuel protests lasted for three days (14th to 17th January 2019), during which 12 people were reportedly killed and many more beaten by security forces. It is estimated that 78 people were treated for gunshot wounds, while hundreds of protesters were arrested by the police.

Year in Review: OONI in 2018

Fri, 18 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

As the new year begins, we publish this post to share some OONI highlights from 2018. We also share some of the exciting new projects we’ll be launching in 2019!

New partnerships

Our network of partners grew significantly in 2018!

Major Revamp: OONI Probe Mobile App 2.0 Launched!

Mon, 14 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Today the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) project is thrilled to announce the release of a major, new OONI Probe mobile app version!

Are websites and social media apps blocked? Is your network unusually slow?

Install OONI Probe now on Android or iOS to find out!

Internet disruption in Gabon amid coup attempt

Wed, 09 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

On 7th January 2019, a military coup was attempted in Gabon in a bid to end more than 50 years of rule by President Ali Bongo’s family. The coup attempt was quickly foiled. Security forces reportedly killed two suspects, arrested seven others, and Gabon’s government retained control.

Meanwhile, a curfew has been imposed and NetBlocks reported that access to the Internet has been shut down.

In this post, we share data that provides signals of network disruptions in Gabon.

Uganda's Social Media Tax through the lens of network measurements

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Image by @neemascribbles.

Probed ISPs: MTN (AS20294), Africell (AS36991), Airtel (AS37075), Smile Telecom (AS37122), Africa Online Uganda (AS29039), DATANET (AS29032), Sombha Solutions (AS328015), Roke (AS37063), Airtel (AS36977), Uganda Telecom (AS21491)

OONI tests: Web Connectivity, HTTP Invalid Request Line, HTTP Header Field Manipulation, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Vanilla Tor.

Testing/analysis period: 1st July 2018 to 24th October 2018

Censorship methods: HTTP blocking (resetting connections) and TCP/IP blocking

The State of Internet Censorship in Venezuela

Thu, 16 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A study by IPYS Venezuela, Venezuela Inteligente, and the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI).

Update (2018-10-19): The section on Tor becoming accessible was added.

Probed ISPs: Most recent measurements collected from Digitel (AS264731), CANTV (AS8048), Movistar (AS6306) and Movilnet (AS27889).

South Sudan: Measuring Internet Censorship in the World's Youngest Nation

Wed, 01 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Image by Mandavi

Established in July 2011, South Sudan is the youngest country in the world. But the transition to independence from Sudan has been far from smooth, as the country experiences an ongoing civil war. Even though internet penetration levels remain quite low, two media websites and two independent blogs were reportedly blocked last year.

This report is a joint research effort by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) and South Sudan’s The Advocates for Human Rights and Democracy (TAHURID). We examine internet censorship in South Sudan through the collection and analysis of network measurements.

Mali: Social media disruptions amid 2018 presidential election?

Tue, 31 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Two days ago, on 29th July 2018, Malians went to the polls to vote in presidential elections and reported that social media was inaccessible.

This is not the first time that social media is reportedly blocked in Mali. Facebook and Twitter were blocked two years ago amidst violent protests against the detention of a popular radio host. Last month, Internet Sans Frontieres reported that social media was disrupted in Mali, following a violent police crackdown on banned opposition protests calling for transparency and accountability in the 2018 presidential elections.

Do you use OONI Probe? We want your feedback!

Thu, 19 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Survey (self-hosted mirror)

Since last year’s launch of the OONI Probe mobile apps, tens of thousands of people have been measuring internet censorship in around 200 countries every month. But OONI Probe is far from perfect.

We’re excited to hear more about your experience with the apps so that we can improve them.

We invite you to complete our survey and/or participate in an interview to provide feedback.

Survey

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the current OONI Probe mobile apps.

The State of Internet Censorship in Egypt

Mon, 02 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The report uncovers anomalies on Egyptian networks, including censorship and the hijacking of unencrypted HTTP connections for advertising and cryptocurrency mining.

Read full report in English Read full report in Arabic

Read the summary of the report in Arabic

Last year, Egypt ordered the blocking of 21 news websites. OONI, a censorship measurement project under the Tor Project, responded by publishing a report on the blocking of (at least) 10 media websites, including Mada Masr and Al Jazeera. In an attempt to identify the remaining blocked sites, Egypt’s Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) ran OONI Probe across multiple networks in Egypt. They subsequently published two research reports, uncovering the blocking of hundreds of URLs (which expand beyond media sites).

Ethiopia: Verifying the unblocking of websites

Fri, 29 Jun 2018 19:49:00 +0000

Pro PM Abiy Ahmed Rally at Meskel Square, June 2018 - Photo by Berhan Taye

On 22nd June 2018, the Ethiopian government reported that it had unblocked 264 websites. This (great) news was also reported by ESAT, a major Ethiopian media website that was blocked over the last years.

Today, OONI and Access Now publish new research based on the testing of sites that were previously found to be blocked, in an attempt to examine whether they have in fact been unblocked in recent days.

Nigeria: Measuring Internet Censorship

Mon, 11 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Last October, Nigeria’s National Communications Commission (NCC) reportedly ordered the blocking of 21 websites. In response, we collaborated with Nigeria’s Paradigm Initiative to test those websites and collect network measurement data that can shed light on whether and how they’re blocked.

Our findings are included in a joint research report that we published today with Paradigm Initiative. The full report, titled “Tightening the Noose on Freedom of Expression: Status of Internet Freedom in Nigeria 2018”, can be downloaded here. A summary of the report is available here.

OONI Community Interviews: Julie Owono

Wed, 23 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

If you’ve met Julie Owono, you’ll probably agree that her passion and determination for defending digital rights is one of the things that stands out about her.

In her capacity as the Executive Director of Internet Sans Frontières (Internet Without Borders), Julie has spearheaded advocacy efforts in defense of online freedoms in many West African countries. Notably, Julie led campaigns against internet shutdowns in Cameroon, as well as in Togo and Chad. Over the last two years, Julie has championed OONI community engagement in West Africa and used OONI data as part of campaigns.

OONI at RightsCon 2018

Fri, 11 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

We are excited to participate at RightsCon next week: the world’s leading event on human rights in the digital age. Annually hosted by Access Now, this three-day conference will take place in Toronto between 16th-18th May 2018.

Over the last years, RightsCon has provided us the opportunity to participate in critical discussions in the digital rights field, meet many fascinating people and organizations, and to form new coalitions. We therefore look forward to participating at RightsCon and are eager to meet many new faces!

OONI Community Interviews: Moses Karanja

Wed, 09 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

We first met Moses Karanja several years ago at the Citizen Lab Summer Institute. He’s a Kenyan information controls researcher, having previously worked with Strathmore University Law School research centre, CIPIT. Currently, he’s a PhD student at the University of Toronto.

Over the last years, Moses has championed OONI community engagement across Africa. Thanks to his tireless efforts, communities in many African countries are now running OONI Probe and using OONI data to examine internet censorship and other forms of network interference. We have worked with Moses on a number of research reports and are grateful for his commitment to defending a free and open internet.

ParkNet: Short Documentary on Internet Censorship in Cuba

Mon, 23 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Last year we had the opportunity to travel to Cuba to explore its internet landscape. We spent most of our time hopping from one public WiFi hotspot to another, measuring networks in Havana, Santa Clara, and Santiago de Cuba. You might remember that we published a research report on our findings.

Today we publish a short documentary (“ParkNet”) on our study of internet censorship in Cuba.

“ParkNet” is a term that we coined to refer to parks that serve as public WiFi hotspots in Cuba. You can also access the internet from many other public spaces, but we found parks to be particularly interesting due to the sort of collective experience that they offer when “visiting” the internet.

OONI's recent participation at events in Africa, India, and Europe

Wed, 11 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last months, the OONI team had the opportunity to host workshops, give presentations, and participate in discussions at the following conferences and events:

Seminar at the University of Cape Town (South Africa)
Internet Policy in Africa: Research Methods for Advocacy workshop (Uganda)
Nullcon 2018 (India)
Internet Freedom Festival (IFF) 2018 (Spain)
Tor Meeting (Italy)

These events provided us a great opportunity to meet many fascinating people from various communities, learn about their work, form new collaborations, and collect feedback for the improvement of our tools and methodologies.

Sierra Leone: Network disruptions amid 2018 runoff elections

Thu, 05 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Last weekend, two network disruptions occurred in Sierra Leone right before and after the country’s runoff elections.

This post examines these disruptions and shares data that corroborates local reports.

It seems that the network disruptions were caused by an ACE submarine cable cut. Google traffic and BGP data suggest that the second disruption, following the runoff elections, could be an internet blackout.

2018 general elections

President Koroma is stepping down, having served ten years in office.

Investigating Internet Blackouts from the Edge of the network: OONI's new upcoming methodology

Wed, 04 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The OONI team is creating a new methodology aimed at automatically detecting and examining internet blackouts. Learn all about our methodology here.

Imagine a day where the internet is shut down completely. You have to work, check the news, and communicate with your friends and family. All of a sudden, you can’t do any of that, because there simply is no internet. It feels like a strange form of time travel has taken place: you’re thrown several decades into the past, into a world without internet, but in one which has learned to heavily rely on it. And sometimes, you remain in that world for several days (or months, in the case of the anglophone region of Cameroon). None of this makes sense, and there’s no clear justification for it either.

Iran Protests: DPI blocking of Instagram (Part 2)

Wed, 14 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

In early January 2018, OONI published a post reporting on the blocking of Telegram and Instagram amidst protests in Iran. We have since been analyzing RIPE data and other network measurements collected from Iran in an attempt to better understand the blockages. Upon further analysis, we found that Instagram was in fact blocked (during the Iran protests) through the use of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology which targeted the TLS protocol. And it was configured in an interesting way.

Iran Protests: OONI data confirms censorship events (Part 1)

Fri, 05 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

At this point, you have probably read all about the major anti-government protests that erupted across Iran over the last week. You may have even read about how services like Telegram and Instagram were blocked, reportedly as part of a government attempt to stifle the unrest.

We publish this post to share OONI network measurement data collected from Iran between 28th December 2017 (when the protests started) to 2nd January 2018. OONI data confirms the blocking of Telegram, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger amidst Iran’s protests and reveals how blocks were implemented.

Year in Review: OONI in 2017

Sat, 30 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

As the end of 2017 approaches, we publish this blog to share some OONI highlights from the last year. We also share some of the things we’ll be working on in 2018!

OONI Probe mobile apps

OONI at the 34th Chaos Communication Congress (34C3)

Sat, 23 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Next week the OONI team will be attending the 34th Chaos Communication Congress (34C3): Europe’s largest hacker conference on technology, society, and utopia. Are you going? We hope to see you there!

OONI lecture

OONI’s founder and project lead, Arturo Filastò, will be presenting OONI at 34C3.

OONI at LAVITS and Primavera Hacker 2017

Tue, 12 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier this month we had the opportunity to present OONI at two conferences in Chile: LAVITS and Primavera Hacker.

LAVITS

LAVITS is a Latin American network of surveillance technology and society studies that organizes international symposiums since 2009. It features publications, talks and workshops related to surveillance and technology, internet censorship, resistance and counter surveillance, identification, biometrics, protection of personal data and privacy. The fifth series of the LAVITS symposium took place in Santiago, Chile from 29th November to 1st December 2017.

How Pakistan blocked news outlets, social media sites, and IM apps amidst protests

Wed, 29 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Last weekend, a number of social media sites and news outlets were blocked in Pakistan during Islamist protests. Protesters gathered in Islamabad alleged that Mr. Zahid Hamid, the Federal Law Minister, should be removed from his position because he omitted a reference to the Prophet Muhammad in a parliamentary bill. On Saturday, 25th November 2017, law enforcement agencies initiated an operation to disperse the sit-in at the Faizabad Interchange linking Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

Identifying cases of DNS misconfiguration: Not quite censorship

Fri, 24 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Country: Brazil, worldwide

OONI tests: Web Connectivity, HTTP requests

Probed ISPs: AS1916 (Associação Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa), AS262650 (Kyatera Informatica Ltda), AS2715 (Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa/RJ), AS27699 (TELEFÔNICA BRASIL S.A), AS28573 (CLARO S.A.), AS52873 (SOFTDADOS CONECTIVIDADE), AS7738 (Telemar Norte Leste S.A.), AS8167 (Brasil Telecom S/A - Filial Distrito Federal)

Measurement period: July 2016 — November 2017

Website inaccessibility reasons: IPv6 or DNS misconfiguration

We recently noticed that pernambuco.com, a regional news portal, has not been reachable from several networks in Brazil for quite some time. By looking at OONI data, we found that the site was not reachable and that it presented signs of DNS-based blocking due to empty DNS responses that is usually a symptom of potential internet censorship. But upon further analysis, we found a number of DNS misconfigurations of the nameservers hosting the domain in question. A nameserver is a function of a DNS server that implements a network service for providing responses to queries against a directory service. In this article we present an analysis of possible DNS misconfigurations that may have caused pernambuco.com to be inaccessible. We also provide some solutions to resolve DNS misconfiguration for pernambuco.com and other sites potentially affected in Brazil and worldwide.

Writing a modern cross-platform desktop app

Mon, 30 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The goal of this article is to outline some of the architecture & design considerations made while thinking about how we would implement the OONI Probe desktop apps. This is the result of research and experimentation with a variety of different libraries and approaches. For each part of the technical stack we will outline the rationale leading to our choices.

Requirements & design goals

Our primary goal with the OONI Probe desktop apps is to enable Windows and macOS desktop users to run OONI Probe network measurement tests without knowledge of the command line. These tests will use the Measurement Kit implementation of OONI tests.

OONI Team Meeting: Montreal 2017

Fri, 20 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Last week, right before the Tor meeting, the OONI team gathered in Montreal for a 4-day meeting to reflect, regroup, hack, and plan.

This post shares information from our meeting and future plans with the broader community. All session notes are available on GitHub.

Internet Censorship in Pakistan: Findings from 2014-2017

Wed, 18 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Islamabad: Political dissent in Pakistan under threat, government censors online content - PC: Haroon Baloch

A research study by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) and Bytes for All Pakistan.

Table of contents

Evidence of Internet Censorship during Catalonia's Independence Referendum

Tue, 03 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Image: Catalan Independence Referendum site seized

Two days ago, Catalonia held a referendum seeking independence from Spain. As the world awaits to see what happens next, we publish this post to share evidence of recent censorship events that occurred during and leading up to the referendum.

We confirm the blocking of at least 25 sites related to the Catalan referendum by means of DNS tampering and HTTP blocking, based on OONI Probe network measurements collected from three local networks. OONI data shows that these sites were blocked every day from (at least) 25th September 2017 (when the testing started) leading up to the referendum day, on 1st October 2017.

Internet Censorship in Iran: Network Measurement Findings from 2014-2017

Thu, 28 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Image: Blockpage in Iran

A research study by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), ASL19, ARTICLE 19, and Small Media.

Table of contents

OONI Run: Let's fight internet censorship together!

Wed, 27 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Today we released OONI Run, a website linked to an exciting new OONI Probe mobile app feature that enables you to:

Engage your friends (and the world) to run censorship measurement tests
Monitor the blocking of your website around the world

OONI Run includes a variety of OONI Probe software testsdesigned to:

Test the blocking of websites
Find middleboxes
Measure the speed and performance of networks
Measure video streaming performance

By choosing the tests that interest you and the sites you want to test, generate a link via OONI Run and share it. Alternatively, embed the widget code to monitor the accessibility of your site. The global OONI Probe community can then respond!

Measuring Internet Censorship in Cuba's ParkNets

Mon, 28 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Image by Arturo Filastò (CC-BY-SA-3.0)

A research study by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)

View the pdf version of the report here.

Table of contents

DASH Streaming Test

Mon, 24 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

DASH Streaming Test

DASH is designed to measure the quality of tested networks by emulating a video streaming. This test is called DASH because it uses the DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) streaming technique.

OONI Partner Gathering 2017

Mon, 24 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Two weeks ago we hosted the first OONI Partner Gathering in Toronto, Canada. This report provides an overview of the event, partner needs and challenges, and future goals to address them.

View the pdf version of the report here.

About

Over the last year, the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) project has had the opportunity to collaborate with various digital rights organizations in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. We joined forces to collaborate on the study of internet censorship by collecting network measurements from local vantage points, reviewing and creating censorship measurement resources, and by publishing findings through research reports.

#EgyptCensors: Evidence of recent censorship events in Egypt

Mon, 19 Jun 2017 15:30:00 +0000

Country: Egypt

OONI tests: Web Connectivity, HTTP Header Field Manipulation, HTTP Invalid Request Line, HTTP Host, Vanilla Tor.

Probed ISPs: Link Egypt (AS24863), Vodafone Egypt (AS36935), Telecom Egypt (AS8452).

Analysis period: 23rd May 2017 to 17th June 2017.

Censorship method: Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) used to RESET connections.

Starting on May 24th, the Egyptian government ordered ISPs to block at least 21 news websites on the grounds of “supporting terrorism and spreading lies”. In an attempt to understand which sites were blocked and how, OONI Probe network measurement software - designed to examine internet censorship - was run in three local vantage points in the country.

The State of Internet Censorship in Indonesia

Tue, 23 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Image: Block page in Indonesia

A research study by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) and Sinar Project.

Table of contents

OONI at the CryptoRave 2017

Fri, 12 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

CryptoRave is a free, non-commercial and collectively funded 48 hour event featuring talks, workshops and activities related to security, privacy, anonymity, hacking and freedom of expression that attracts more that 2,500 people mainly from South America. The event took place in São Paulo, Brazil on 5th and 6th May 2017.

A number of people attended the OONI presentation and workshop (“Listatona”) that was co-organized with Coding Rights. During the workshop participants were able to better understand OONI’s testing methodology, and how OONI Probe performs network measurements. Participants provided useful feedback regarding test-lists and URLs from diverse sources from South America.

OONI at the Internet Freedom Festival & RightsCon 2017

Tue, 04 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last month the OONI team joined the internet freedom community at the following events:

These events provided us with the opportunity to engage with community members, create new friendships, learn about new projects, and to share skills and knowledge. We also had the opportunity to facilitate sessions that allowed us to collect feedback for the improvement of our software and research methodologies.

The State of Internet Censorship in Myanmar

Wed, 29 Mar 2017 13:31:00 +0000

A research study by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), Sinar Project, and the Myanmar ICT for Development Organization (MIDO).

Table of contents

Examining internet blackouts through public data sources

Tue, 28 Mar 2017 16:39:00 +0000

Pulling the plug on the internet is one of the ways that governments around the world attempt to exert control over the flow of information.

While the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) project has developed numerous software tests for examining different forms of internet censorship (such as the blocking of websites, instant messaging apps, and censorship circumvention tools), we currently do not have tests that are designed to examine internet blackouts, when the internet as a whole is rendered inaccessible within a location.

The State of Internet Censorship in Thailand

Mon, 20 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Image: Block page in Thailand

A research study by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), Sinar Project, and the Thai Netizen Network.

Table of contents

New OONI Probe Mobile App: Measure Internet Censorship & Performance

Thu, 09 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Today the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) project is thrilled to announce the release of a new mobile app (“OONI Probe - Measure Internet Censorship & Performance”) that can now be installed on Android and iOS for testing Internet censorship and network performance.

By running the tests included in OONI’s mobile app, you can monitor:

Kenya: Censorship-free internet?

Tue, 27 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last five months we ran OONI tests in Kenya almost every day to examine whether internet censorship events were occurring in the country. Hundreds of thousands of network measurements were collected and analyzed. 1,357 URLs were tested for censorship, including both international websites and sites that are more relevant to Kenya (e.g. local news outlets). Yet, after five months of intensive testing from four local vantage points in Kenya, we found almost no signs of internet censorship in the country.

The State of Internet Censorship in Malaysia

Tue, 20 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Block page in Malaysia

A research study by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) and Sinar Project.

Table of contents

New OONI tests examine the blocking of WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger

Thu, 15 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Today the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) project is excited to announce the release of two new software tests which are designed to examine the blocking of WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. You can now run these tests to monitor the accessibility of these apps across time, and to collect data that can serve as evidence when/if they are blocked.

WhatsApp test

Many of our users have asked us to develop a test to examine the accessibility of WhatsApp, especially in light of it being blocked by various governments around the world during elections, protests, and other political events.

Ethiopia: Evidence of social media blocking and internet censorship

Wed, 14 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Youth in Addis trying to get Wi-Fi Connection. Credit Addis Fortune Newspaper

Recently we published a post about what appeared to be a possible internet shutdown in Ethiopia during a wave of ongoing protests by ethnic groups. Today, in collaboration with Amnesty International we are releasing a report that includes evidence of recent censorship events during Ethiopia’s political upheaval.

See the Amharic translation of the report. Translated by Wolete Mariam.

View the pdf version of the report here.

OONI releases new Web UI: Run censorship tests from your web browser!

Tue, 13 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Today we are excited to announce the beta release of our new web-based user interface (WUI) that enables OONI Probe users to run censorship tests from a web browser!

Whether you’re running OONI Probe from your desktop or a Raspberry Pi, you can now easily choose which tests you want to run through OONI’s web UI and run them with the click of a button. These tests are designed to examine the following:

The Gambia: Internet Shutdown during 2016 Presidential Election

Fri, 09 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Last week we attempted to perform OONI network measurement tests in the Gambia to examine whether websites were blocked during its 2016 presidential election. But merely a few hours after we connected our probe to perform tests, it stopped working completely.

We suspected that this was due to an internet shutdown. To confirm this, we referred to third-party data to examine whether a country-wide internet blackout was taking place.

In this report, we summarize some of our key findings pertaining to the internet shutdown that appears to have occurred in the Gambia on the eve of its 2016 presidential election.

urandom.pcap: Belarus (finally) bans Tor

Thu, 08 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Country: Belarus

Probed ISPs: Beltelecom (AS 6697)

Censorship method: TCP injections

We have recently heard of network anomalies in Belarus. Tor has been finally blocked in December 2016, although it had been explicitly declared that Tor should be blocked since February 2015.

An anonymous cypherpunk has helped to gather some evidence regarding Tor being blocked in Belarus. It’s neither a complete study nor an in-depth research and it’s unclear if any other further evidence will be gathered, so we decided to share current knowledge as-is:

OONI releases Lepidopter Raspberry Pi distribution

Wed, 07 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) team is happy to announce the beta release of OONI Probe’s distribution for Raspberry Pis, caĺled Lepidopter.

What is Lepidopter

Lepidopter is a Raspberry Pi distribution image with all the required dependencies and software packages in place, configured to run network measurement tests via the OONI Probe software. It is developed and designed to require no physical attendance upon first bootstrap but also allows experienced users to further configure it as they wish. The source code and the building scripts of the Lepidopter image are free and open source software.

OONI-dev meeting and hackathon 2016

Tue, 22 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Oonitarians are spread out across the globe, and OONI’s core team is no exception. We recently met in Berlin to hack on OONI’s software, work on our roadmap, and to have all those discussions that are more fruitful to have in person than on IRC. We also held a hackathon to engage new individuals with our project!

Below we document some of the things that we worked on as part of our OONI-dev meeting and hackathon.

Egypt: Media censorship, Tor interference, HTTPS throttling and ads injections?

Thu, 27 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Country: Egypt

Probed ISPs: Noor (AS 20928), TE Data (AS 8452), Vodafone (AS 24835)

Censorship method: DPI, network throttling, TCP injections

OONI tests: HTTP Requests, Web Connectivity, Vanilla Tor

Measurement period: 2016-08-27 - 2016-10-26

We recently noticed network anomalies in Egypt and performed a study in an attempt to understand the situation.

Our findings indicate that the Tor anonymity network appeared to be interfered with in Egypt, while HTTPS connections to DigitalOcean’s Frankfurt data centre were throttled. We also found that access to porn sites appeared to be interfered with via in-band TCP packet injections of advertisement and malware content, and that the blocking of The New Arab website led to the blocking of specific content (such as images) of other sites that are hosted on the same Content Distribution Network (CDN).

OONI Hackathon: Join us to explore internet censorship!

Tue, 25 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Interested in exploring (and exposing) internet censorship? Join the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) hackathon in Berlin!

When? Friday, 11th November & Saturday, 12th November 2016
Where? The OnionSpace (Gottschedstraße 4, 13357 Berlin, Germany)
What time? 10am onwards
Who? Software developers, data analysts, academics, journalists, bloggers, lawyers, activists, and all those who don’t go by any particular label, but are curious enough to join! We only have one rule: Be excellent to each other.

Zambia: Internet censorship during the 2016 general elections?

Tue, 11 Oct 2016 10:52:00 +0000

A research study by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) and Strathmore University’s Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT).

Table of contents

Ethiopia: Internet Shutdown Amidst Recent Protests?

Wed, 10 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Nearly 100 deaths and thousands of arrests have been reported in Ethiopia over the last days, as part of protests against the marginalization and persecution of the Oromos and Amharas, Ethiopia’s two largest ethnic groups. But the attacks and arrests may not have been the only forms of retribution carried out by the Ethiopian government in its crackdown against protesters.

Last weekend, the internet was reportedly shut down in the country.

In an attempt to understand whether the internet was in fact shut down, we looked at some public sources of data that contain information about internet traffic. Such data provides strong indicators that the internet was most likely shut down during the Ethiopian protests last weekend, though it remains unclear if this occurred in all regions and/or on all types of networks across the country.

Internet Access Disruption in Turkey - July 2016

Tue, 19 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

With the attempted coup in Turkey, reports went out about social media being throttled and/or blocked. We analysed data about this that we collected with RIPE Atlas and the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI).

On 15 July, a coup was attempted in Turkey. We heard about social media being throttled and/or blocked, but much was unclear about what was actually going on. Here we present measurement data from various platforms that shared their data publicly.

OONI releases new Web Connectivity test for detecting online censorship

Fri, 03 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Today the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) is excited to be releasing a brand new test, called Web Connectivity, which is designed to detect three different types of censorship: DNS tampering, TCP/IP blocking and HTTP blocking.

Advantages of running Web Connectivity

This test allows us to see which websites are blocked and how, more accurately than ever before!

How Uganda blocked social media, again

Tue, 17 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Country: Uganda

Probed ISPs: Orange (AS36991), SMILE (AS37122)

Censorship method: IP blocking

OONI tests: HTTP Requests

Measurement period: 2016-05-12

Last Wednesday, the Ugandan Communications Commission (UCC) ordered ISPs to block access to social media leading up to the (fifth) inauguration of President Yoweri Museveni, who has governed the country since 1986. Authorities argued that the blocking was ordered for “security purposes”, but the move directly harms political opposition, which has relied on social media to organize a “defiance campaign” of protests.

OONI Data Reveals How WhatsApp Was Blocked (Again) in Brazil

Fri, 06 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Country: Brazil

Probed ISPs: Tim mobile (AS 26615), Oi landline (AS 7738)

Censorship method: DNS Hijacking

OONI tests: HTTP Requests, DNS Consistency

Measurement period: 2016-05-02 - 2016-05-03

19:10 UTC Saturday, 7 May 2016 Update: Add OONI Explorer measurements links

Ever since WhatsApp implemented end-to-end encryption to protect the privacy and security of its 1 billion users worldwide, several cases of censorship have been ordered by governments who are frustrated with the fact that they can no longer access users’ private communications. Having implemented end-to-end encryption with the Signal protocol, WhatsApp cannot decrypt its users’ data, even if it wanted to - which is precisely what makes it secure.

EEEP and Greek Internet censorship

Wed, 10 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Technical analysis of Hellenic gaming commission blacklist in Greece

Zambia, a country under Deep Packet Inspection

Mon, 15 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

"I do not have the details of the blocking of Zambianwatchdog.com, but I
would celebrate."
 Guy Scott 
 Zambian Vicepresident, Friday 28th June 2013

The following article is a guest blog post by Mr T. an independent researcher and provider of hosting to various grass roots organizations.

This article summarizes how we discovered that the grass roots online newspaper Zambianwatchdog.com was being blocked inside Zambia. This report provides technical evidence of the unlawful presence of Deep Packet Inspection in the country to monitor the Internet communications and stop users from browsing the website.

Tab-Tab, Come in! Bypassing Internet blocking to categorize DPI devices

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Analysis of censorship in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan

Hadara Palestine

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This is the technical report on the politically motivated censorship going on in Bethlehem, West Bank

T-Mobile USA Web Guard

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Measuring censorship on T-Mobile USA

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

GOAL

OONI is a project aimed at mapping network anomalies by performing measurements from the vantage point of a users. You may find details on what exactly it is that we measure by reading through our test specifications. The data we collect is then made available to the public for further analysis.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

WARNING: Running OONI may be against the terms of service of your ISP or legally questionable in your country. By running OONI you will connect to web services which may be banned, and use web censorship circumvention methods such as Tor. The OONI project will publish data submitted by probes, possibly including your IP address or other identifying information. In addition, your use of OONI will be clear to anybody who has access to your computer, and to anybody who can monitor your internet connection (such as your employer, ISP or government).

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Risks: Things you should know before running OONI Probe

Translations:

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This URL is old

Raw OONI Probe measurements now live at: https://api.ooni.io.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Can you join our group of US-based volunteers?

When we need certain tests run to track net neutrality violations in the US, we’ll email you instructions on how to participate.

We promise we will not spam you.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

OONI Monthly Report: July 2019

In July 2019, the OONI team made progress on many fronts: fast-path pipeline, RSS feed generator, OONI Probe mobile and desktop apps, new OONI Explorer, OONI Probe Orchestration System, ndt7, and on making OONI Probe testing more resilient to network outages. We also held a team meeting to roadmap for the next 12 months, and we attended the Tor Meeting and the Citizen Lab Summer Institute (CLSI). Further details are provided below.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Angolan Legislative Election 2017

Election day is an important day, but so are the days following an election.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Facebook and WhatsApp blocked in Togo?

Today, 6th September 2017, we heard that Facebook and WhatsApp are inaccessible in Togo.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Belarus: Test blocking of charter97.org

Reporters Without Borders reported the blocking of news outlet charter97.org in Belarus: https://rsf.org/en/news/blocking-leading-belarusian-news-website-seen-test-eu

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Help us improve OONI Probe

Thanks for using OONI Probe! We’re excited to hear more about your experience with OONI Probe so that we can improve it.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Document the unblocking of Wikipedia

Wikipedia is reportedly unblocked in Turkey, after having been blocked for more than 2 years.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

OONI labs has been retired

The OONI Labs host has been retired for the time being as we plan to integrate work from it in OONI Explorer.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

User Guide: OONI Run

Last updated: 18th November 2024

7amleh

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

7amleh – The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media is a non-profit organization that advocates for Palestinian digital rights.

7amleh’s mission is to create a safe, fair, and free digital space for Palestinians. It studies and researches issues related to Palestinian digital rights, provides digital rights, digital activism, and digital security capacity-building opportunities to Palestinian activists and civil society, and manages local and international advocacy campaigns.

Access Now

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Access Now defends and extends the digital rights of users at risk around the world through policy and advocacy efforts. Every year, they host RightsCon, the world’s leading summit on human rights in the digital age.

Since 2016, Access Now’s #KeepItOn coalition — more than 300 organizations from 105 countries around the world — has been fighting internet shutdowns with all kinds of creative approaches, including grassroots advocacy, direct policy-maker engagement, technical support, corporate accountability, and legal intervention.

Annir Initiative

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Annir Initiative is an independent, neutral, and non-political Libyan initiative focused on digital space matters in Libya. Annir focuses on spreading digital awareness and knowledge, advocating for digital rights and safety, and fighting misinformation.

Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC) is a civil society organization based in Argentina that, since its foundation in 1995, works to defend and promote civil and human rights in Argentina and Latin America.

Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) is a nongovernmental organization, registered in accordance with Egyptian law as a law firm since 2007. The association works to promote and protect freedom of expression and freedom of information. It uses research, legal support, monitoring of violations, and advocacy through its team of researchers and lawyers.

AFTE is concerned with a number of issues, such as: media freedom, digital rights, freedom of information, freedom of creativity, academic freedom, student rights and freedoms, the right to privacy.

Azerbaijan Internet Watch

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Azerbaijan Internet Watch (AIW) is an online resource platform tracking and mapping internet censorship and surveillance in real-time in Azerbaijan.

Campaign for Human Rights & Development International (CHRDI)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Campaign for Human Rights and Development International (CHRDI) is a development and human rights organisation (based in Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom) that utilizes rights based and voice and accountability approaches to bridge the justice and social equity gaps. They envision a world in which all people enjoy their human rights and live with dignity, equality, and justice.

CHRDI is in Special Consultative Status to the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOS) and accredited to many UN Agencies.

Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT), Strathmore University

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT) is an evidence-based research and training Centre based at Strathmore University, Nairobi, Kenya.

Their Mission is to study, create, and share knowledge on the development of intellectual property and information technology, especially as they contribute to African Law and Human Rights.

Their team is multidisciplinary, drawn from law, political science, computer science and development while using diverse methodological approaches to inform debates on ICT applications and regulation.

Coding Rights

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Coding Rights are an organisation bringing an intersectional feminist approach to defend human rights in the development, regulation and use of technologies. They act collectively and in networks, use creativity and hacker knowledge to question the present and reimagine a future based on transfeminist and decolonial values.

Their mission is to expose and challenge technologies which reinforce power asymmetries, with focus on gender inequalities and its intersectionalities.

Openness, transparency, diversity, equality, privacy and freedom in the access and usages of technologies and in the interaction with governance processes are at the core of the development of a people-centered network and a democratic society. Coding Rights’ projects are meant to cherish these values, empowering civil society, and particularly women from different fields across the globe, to promote a shift in the male lead environment of ICTs.

Community Participation In Sustainable Development (COMPSUDEV) Cameroon

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Community Participation in Sustainable Development (COMPSUDEV) is a non-profit association in Cameroon that sets out to empower youths and communities through sustainable livelihood programs in the domain of ICT and Open Access to the internet.

COMPSUDEV Cameroon is one of the pioneer members of the Cameroon Digital Rights Coalition working on digital security and censorship.

COMPSUDEV Cameroon is concerned with issues such as; right to privacy, information freedom, digital security, open internet, internet circumvention, digital rights and responsibilities and open data.

Computech Institute

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Based in Dakar since 2015, Computech Institute is a research and training organization. Their activities focus on cybersecurity, disinformation and misinformation, internet shutdowns, promotion of digital rights and democracy through ICTs. The activities are run through technical training, awareness raising, research and advocacy.

Conexión Segura y Libre

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Conexión Segura y Libre is a non-profit organization that aims to facilitate information, communication and collaboration between citizens and civil society organizations to create impact from a non-partisan perspective. They promote, facilitate and develop digital tools, improving access to information, collaboration and responsiveness, empowering organizations, activists and citizens. They fight for the rights of Venezuelans online and offline.

Through their VEsinFiltro project, Conexión Segura y Libre investigate and document internet censorship in Venezuela, using (along with custom scripts and tools) OONI Probe and OONI data.

Coordinating OONI censorship measurement campaigns

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Last updated: 21st March 2023

Internet censorship around the world often emerges during political events, such as elections or protests. The abrupt emergence of new blocks requires rapid response in terms of measurement, particularly if the blocks are short-lived. Such measurement can help with the collection of data that can potentially serve as evidence of internet censorship, supporting the efforts of journalists, researchers, and human rights defenders challenging the blocks.

Detecting sudden or expected blocks can be achieved through community coordination on censorship measurement.

CyberHUB-AM

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

CyberHUB-AM is an Armenian digital defence group that operates as a dedicated IT support hub and Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT). Its primary mission is to bolster the digital security of civil society – assisting NGOs, human rights defenders, activists, journalists, and independent media outlets. By safeguarding these vital groups often facing IT or cybersecurity challenges, CyberHUB-AM directly contributes to and supports initiatives dedicated to upholding internet freedom and human rights in the region.

DefendDefenders

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

DefendDefenders (East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project) seeks to strengthen the work of human rights defenders (HRDs) throughout the East and Horn of Africa sub-region by reducing their vulnerability to the risk of persecution and by enhancing their capacity to effectively defend human rights. They work in Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia/Somaliland, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.

DefendDefenders serves as the secretariat of the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Network, which represents hundreds of members consisting of individual HRDs, human rights organisations, and national HRD coalitions.

Derechos Digitales

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Derechos Digitales is an independent, non-profit organization of Latin American scope, founded in 2005 and whose main objective is the development, defense and promotion of human rights in the digital environment.

The organization’s work is concentrated on three fundamental axes:

Freedom of expression.
Privacy and personal data.
Copyright and access to knowledge.

The mission of Derechos Digitales is the defense, promotion and development of human rights in the digital environment in Latin America, through the study and dissemination of information on public policies and private practices, to promote social change around the respect and dignity of people.

Digital Rights Foundation

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Digital Rights Foundation (DRF) is a feminist, not-for-profit organisation based in Pakistan working on digital rights freedoms since 2013. DRF envisions a place where all people, especially women and gender minorities, can exercise the right of expression without being threatened. DRF believes that a free internet with access to information and impeccable privacy policies can create safe online spaces for not only women but the world at large.

At DRF, we aim to strengthen the protections for human rights defenders (HRDs), with a focus on women’s rights in digital spaces through policy advocacy and digital security awareness-raising. In addition, one of our main aims is to protect women from cyber harassment that they have to deal with throughout their lives by making them aware of their rights and making resources accessible when they need help.

Digital Rights Lab

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Digital Rights Lab is an independent and non-political non-profit Sudanese organization that focuses on enhancing online space in Sudan.

To this end, Digital Rights Lab works to:

Perform network measurements and analyze the network measurement data
Advocate for Internet freedom
Empower local communities in Sudan with the necessary information and tools to access the internet safely and privately to know about digital threats and how to combat them
Provide digital security training to activists, human rights defenders, and journalists - including minority and marginalized groups
Evaluate information online and fact-check it, in order to curb the spread of fake news and mis/mal/disinformation, especially during critical times, e.g. elections, public unrest, or health crisis

Digital Rights Nepal

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Digital Rights Nepal (DRN) is a non-profit organization dedicated to safeguarding and advancing digital rights in Nepal. Since its establishment in 2020, DRN has been at the forefront of advocating for online freedom of expression, privacy, data protection, and equitable access to information. The organization achieves this through rigorous research, impactful policy advocacy, and comprehensive capacity-building programs.

DRN tackles pressing issues such as disinformation, hate speech, and cybersecurity, while playing a key role in shaping inclusive internet governance and progressive cyber laws. Its efforts include providing legal defense and support for journalists and activists facing prosecution or online threats, fostering a safer and more resilient digital environment.

Digital Security Lab Ukraine

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Digital Security Lab Ukraine managed efforts to establish a nationwide Internet censorship measurement system in Ukraine. In doing so, they engaged volunteers across different regions of Ukraine with the use of OONI Probe for censorship measurement, and they performed analysis of OONI data to uncover censorship events. They published several reports documenting their findings, showing how internet censorship varies across regions and networks within Ukraine.

Digital Society of Africa

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Digital Society of Africa (DSA) works to strengthen the resilience and ability of frontline activists; human rights defenders and other at-risk groups in the region to independently recognize and respond to digital threats and attacks. They seek to achieve this using the holistic security approach; through a range of activities including: organisational security audits; risk assessment; trainings, sustainable security accompaniment; security policy formulation and tech support.

Digitally Right

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Digitally Right is a Bangladesh based company dedicated to promoting a free and open digital space through the use of research, analysis, and capacity building. They support civil society, media, and businesses with critical knowledge and solutions to help them navigate the ever-changing information ecosystem.

DNS consistency

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This test compares the DNS query results from a DNS resolver which is considered to be reliable with one that is tested for tampering.

The domain name system (DNS) is what is responsible for transforming a host name (e.g. torproject.org) into an IP address (e.g. 38.229.72.16). ISPs, amongst others, run DNS resolvers which map IP addresses to host names. In certain circumstances though, ISPs map the wrong IP addresses to the wrong host names. This is a form of tampering, which OONI can detect by running its DNS consistency test.

Download OONI Probe Desktop

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Download OONI Probe for Windows Download OONI Probe for macOS

Other Platforms »

User Guide »

EngageMedia

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Established in 2005, EngageMedia is a regional not-for-profit organisation with a distributed team in eight countries across APAC dedicated to advocating digital rights and championing open technology in the region. EngageMedia combines capacity building, knowledge sharing, tech enablement, community development, and digital storytelling to support civil society organisers, grassroots activists, independent journalists, academics, lawyers, and other HRDs who are working towards the respect, promotion, and protection of human rights, democracy, and the environment in the region.

Facebook Messenger test

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This test is designed to examine the reachability of Facebook Messenger within a tested network.

OONI’s Facebook Messenger test attempts to perform a TCP connection and DNS lookup to Facebook’s endpoints over the vantage point of the user.

Based on this methodology, Facebook Messenger is likely blocked if one or both of the following apply:

TCP connections to Facebook’s endpoints fail
DNS lookups to domains associated to Facebook do not resolve to IP addresses allocated to Facebook

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section aims to address the questions that we are frequently asked by the community.

Translations:

Español, Preguntas frecuentes (FAQ)
العربية, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
فارسی, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Kiswahili, Maswali Yanayoulizwa Mara kwa Mara (MYM)
Русский, Часто задаваемые вопросы
Khmer, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) by DigitalHub101
Tiếng Việt, Trang Những Câu Hỏi Thường Gặp
မြန်မာ, မကြာခဏ မေးမြန်းခံရလေ့ရှိသော မေးခွန်းများ

Are there other questions you would like us to address? Please let us know.

About OONI

Fundación Internet Bolivia

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Fundación Internet Bolivia aims to defend digital rights in Bolivia through the generation of knowledge and the promotion of good practices. Their vision is to achieve free, open and secure Internet access for the Bolivian population.

Fundación Karisma

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Fundación Karisma is a Colombian civil society organization that seeks to respond to the threats and opportunities that “technology for development” poses to the exercise of human rights. In 2021, Fundación Karisma launched OBI (Observatorio de Bloqueos de Internet) project aimed to document and investigate internet censorship in Colombia.

In 2019, Fundación Karisma won the Index Censorship Freedom of Expression Award.

GitHub: Updating the Citizen Lab test lists

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This guide is meant for GitHub users and provides information related to updating the Citizen Lab test lists for website censorship testing. If you are not a GitHub user, please refer to our Test Lists Editor.

By contributing to the Citizen Lab test lists, you can support website censorship testing by OONI Probe users around the world.

Before getting started, please refer to our documentation to learn all about test lists.

GLITCH

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Global Information Technology Controls Hub (GLITCH) is based at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. GLITCH brings together academics, organisations and other stakeholders researching digital rights, information controls, internet shutdowns, and censorship.

They take a highly interdisciplinary perspective on the study of information controls, bringing together quantitative and qualitative tools in the social sciences, statistics, and computer science to identify the root causes of censorship and shutdowns, and their wider effects on individuals and societies.

HTTP Header Field Manipulation

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This test tries to detect the presence of network components (“middle box”) which could be responsible for censorship and/or traffic manipulation.

HTTP is a protocol which transfers or exchanges data across the internet. It does so by handling a client’s request to connect to a server, and a server’s response to a client’s request. Every time you connect to a server, you (the client) send a request through the HTTP protocol to that server. Such requests include “HTTP headers”, which transmit various types of information, including your device’s operating system and the type of browser that it’s using. If you are using Firefox on Windows, for example, the “user agent header” in your HTTP request will tell the server that you’re using a Firefox browser on a Windows operating system.

HTTP Host

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This test attempts to:

examine whether the domain names of websites are blocked
detect the presence of “middle boxes” (software which could be used for censorship and/or traffic manipulation) in tested networks
assess which censorship circumvention techniques are capable of bypassing the censorship implemented by the “middle box”

HTTP is a protocol which transfers or exchanges data across the internet. It does so by handling a client’s request to connect to a server, and a server’s response to a client’s request. Every time you connect to a server, you (the client) send a request through the HTTP protocol to that server. Such requests include “HTTP headers”, some of which (the “Host header”) include information about the specific domain that you want to connect to. When you connect to torproject.org, for example, the host header of your HTTP request includes information which communicates that you want to connect to that domain.

HTTP Invalid Request Line

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This test tries to detect the presence of network components (“middle box”) which could be responsible for censorship and/or traffic manipulation.

Instead of sending a normal HTTP request, this test sends an invalid HTTP request line - containing an invalid HTTP version number, an invalid field count and a huge request method – to an echo service listening on the standard HTTP port. An echo service is a very useful debugging and measurement tool, which simply sends back to the originating source any data it receives. If a middle box is not present in the network between the user and an echo service, then the echo service will send the invalid HTTP request line back to the user, exactly as it received it. In such cases, we assume that there is no visible traffic manipulation in the tested network.

HTTP Requests

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This test tries to detect online censorship based on a comparison of HTTP requests over Tor and over the network of the user.

HTTP is a protocol which allows communication between a client and a server. It does so by handling a client’s request to connect to a server, and a server’s response to a client’s request. Every time you connect to a website, your browser (the client) sends a request through the HTTP protocol to the server which is hosting that website. A server normally responds with the content of the website it is hosting. In some cases though, Internet Service Providers (ISP) prevent users from accessing certain websites by blocking or interfering with the connection between them and the server.

ICT Users Association (ASUTIC)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

ASUTIC a non-profit organization in Senegal that protects digital rights, promotes digital economy and digital ecology, and works to strengthen democracy through ICT.

They strive for getting people access to knowledge and information, key drivers for sustainable development to the benefit of everyone.

ASUTIC are mobilized for a strong and dynamic democracy through transparency, accountability of policy makers and citizen participation, based on gender equality. They work to relocate power from politicians to citizens.

Install OONI Probe CLI

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

To install OONI Probe on the command line, follow the installation instructions for the platforms below:

Debian/Ubuntu
macOS

Upon installation, OONI Probe will run tests automatically every day!

For in depth usage instructions, check out the OONI Probe CLI user guide.

Install OONI Probe CLI on Debian/Ubuntu Linux

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Install the GPG key:

sudo gpg --no-default-keyring --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com --keyring /etc/apt/keyrings/ooni-apt-keyring.gpg --recv-keys 'B5A08F01796E7F521861B449372D1FF271F2DD50'

You can choose how to fetch OONI Probe:

A) Using HTTP. This is the recommended option.

echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/ooni-apt-keyring.gpg] https://deb.ooni.org/ unstable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ooniprobe.list

B) Using Tor. This is an alternative option in case the HTTP repository is not reachable. This requires running the tor daemon on your system.

sudo apt-get install tor apt-transport-tor
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/ooni-apt-keyring.gpg] tor+http://deb.ooni.org/ unstable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ooniprobe.list

Finally, update the package list and install OONI Probe

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ooniprobe-cli

Install OONI Probe CLI on macOS

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Install homebrew
Install ooniprobe

brew install ooniprobe

Start automatic daily run

ooniprobe autorun start

Install OONI Probe Mobile

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Other Platforms »

User Guide »

Internet Freedom Kazakhstan (IFKZ)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Internet Freedom Kazakhstan (IFKZ) aims to ensure that the Internet of Kazakhstan is free from any unlawful censorship or restrictions and to create a user-friendly digital environment with the possibility to exercise all human rights and freedoms.

IFKZ focuses on:

Enhancing transparency of governmental authorities in the ICT industry
Introducing selectable access to unlawfully restricted resources
Analyzing the legal grounds for restricting access to websites
Advocating for digital human rights and freedoms

Internet Outage Detection & Analysis (IODA)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) project is run by the Internet Intelligence Research Lab, which is based at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Computer Science in the College of Computing.

IODA monitors the Internet in near-realtime to identify macroscopic Internet outages affecting the edge of the network, i.e., significantly impacting a network operator (AS) or a large fraction of a country.

IODA combines information from three data sources, establishes the relevance of an event and generates alerts. The outage events and the corresponding signals obtained through automated analysis are displayed in near-realtime on public dashboards and interactive graphs that allow the user to further inspect the data.

Internet Sans Frontières

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Internet Sans Frontières is a non-profit organizations whose objective is to promote the free flow of information and knowledge, defend digital rights and freedoms and fight against all forms of censorship on connected networks.

Internet Sans Frontières has led advocacy efforts against internet shutdowns in West Africa.

Internet Society

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Internet Society is a global nonprofit empowering people to keep the Internet a force for good: open, globally connected, secure, and trustworthy. They believe that the Internet is for everyone. Their work centers on increasing the Internet’s reach, reliability and resilience, as well as ensuring that the Internet remains open, globally connected, secure, and trustworthy. To assess whether these efforts are working, they’re building Internet Society Pulse - a curated set of insights to help everyone gain deeper, data-driven insight into the health, availability and evolution of the global Internet.

Interpreting OONI data

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This documentation explains how you can interpret OONI data. It’s primarily intended for researchers interested in investigating internet censorship around the world. Knowledge of some internet basics (i.e how the internet works) is required, though you can also refer to the OONI Glossary for the explanation of relevant terms.

We also recommend referring to the OONI Explorer user guide for accessing OONI data.

OONI data

What is OONI data?

OONI data is open data on internet censorship around the world.

IPYS Venezuela

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

IPYS Venezuela works for a Venezuela where there is full enjoyment of freedom of expression and the right to information, and demands that the necessary guarantees to exercise free and plural journalism, allowing the scrutiny of power, be met.

For the advancement of this vision, and as an organization formed by professionals and defenders of communication, IPYS Venezuela promotes the development of journalists and communicators, as well as the establishment of conditions that guarantee an independent and vigilant investigative journalism.

Jordan Open Source Association (JOSA)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Jordan Open Source Association (JOSA) is a non-profit organization that works for the promotion and implementation of the Open Source principles in Jordan. JOSA organizes activities and leads initiatives in different fields, including Open Source software and hardware, Open Content and Free Culture, and digital rights.

JOSA’s main objectives are building a more open, collaborative Jordan, pushing technical skillset for the tech community in Jordan to a global caliber, ensure readiness of ICT graduates and defending Jordanians’ rights online.

Lantern

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This test provides an automated way of examining whether Lantern works in a tested network.

Lantern is a centralized and peer-to-peer proxy, which is used as a circumvention tool. It detects whether websites are blocked and, if so, it allows you to access them via Lantern servers or via the network of Lantern users.

This test runs Lantern and checks to see if it is working. If it’s able to connect to a Lantern server and reach a control website over it, then we consider that Lantern can be used for censorship circumvention within the tested network. If however the test is unable to connect to Lantern servers, then it is likely the case that they are blocked within the tested network.

Localization Lab

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Localization Lab believes that language shouldn’t be a barrier when it comes to security and access to the Internet. Since 2012, they have helped expand the reach of Internet freedom tools by unlocking access to communities all over the world.

To this end, Localization Lab works to:

Expand the reach of Internet freedom technology and supporting materials.
Facilitate relationships between developers and end-users to increase the adoption of new technologies and ensure that community needs are being met.

Masaar - Technology and Law Community

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Masaar are a group of lawyers and technologists interested in enhancing and promoting digital rights and associated freedoms in Egypt. They focus on merging law and technology and deepening their understanding of their impact on human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Masaar’s activities focus on digital freedoms in the context of the Egyptian law, but that will not isolate Masaar from the human rights situation in other countries in the region and the world. This regional focus stems from the fact that surveillance and censorship policies, restrictions on digital media and the denial of freedom of information are concerns common to all countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Also, countries in the region share certain economic and political trends that contributed to the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 and still inform people’s protests today.

Measure internet censorship

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Download OONI Probe Desktop

Windows 64-bit macOS

Install OONI Probe Mobile

Install OONI Probe CLI

Install instructions

Meek Fronted Requests

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This test examines whether the domains used by Meek (a type of Tor bridge) work in tested networks.

Meek is a pluggable transport which uses non-blocked domains, such as google.com, awsstatic.com (Amazon cloud infrastructure) and ajax.aspnetcdn.com (Microsoft azure cloud infrastructure), to proxy its users over Tor to blocked websites, while hiding both the fact that they are connecting to such websites and how they are connecting to them. As such, Meek is useful for not only connecting to websites that are blocked, but for also hiding which websites you are connecting to.

Miaan Group

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Miaan Group is a nonprofit organization founded in 2019 to promote human rights, good governance, and social justice in Iran and the broader Middle East and North Africa region.

To achieve their goals, Miaan Group focus on three main areas:

Internet freedom and digital rights: Miaan Group works to counter threats posed by online censorship, surveillance, network disruption, and government harassment by empowering citizens, activists, and technologists.
Capacity building and mentoring: Miaan Group provides local networks inside Iran and diaspora-based human rights defenders with legal and technical expertise, research, and advocacy support to strengthen civil society and human rights organizations.
Policy and legal advocacy: Miaan Group’s advocacy efforts center on working with advocates and researchers to deliver information and recommendations to international stakeholders to influence policy and behavior inside Iran.

Miaan Group is dedicated to building a legal and policy structure that upholds and protects human rights in Iran and the wider Middle East and North Africa region. To accomplish this, their team is made up of experts with extensive backgrounds in research, advocacy, and journalism. They possess a deep expertise of human rights law and policy, internet freedom and security, and the rights of marginalized communities, including ethnic and religious minorities, women, children, individuals with disabilities, and LGBTQI+ people.

Myanmar ICT for Development Organization (MIDO)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Myanmar ICT for Development Organization (MIDO) aims to promote the spread of ICT technology in rural areas of Myanmar and to improve people’s lives and knowledge.

NDT Speed Test

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

NDT (Network Diagnostic Test) is designed to measure the speed and performance of tested networks.

This network performance test was originally developed by The Internet2 Project and is currently maintained by Measurement Lab (M-Lab). NDT is designed to measure the speed and performance of networks by connecting to M-Lab servers close to the user, and by subsequently uploading and downloading random data. In doing so, NDT collects TCP/IP low level information that is useful to examining and characterizing the quality of the network path between the user and the mLab server.

Netalitica

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Netalitica aims to improve the Citizen Lab’s test lists that network measurement tools (i.e. OONI Probe, Centinel) use to uncover blocking of websites. If network probes have evolved over the years, test lists for some countries and regions have seen little updates, which negatively affects the quality of collected measurements and wastes resources of testers on the ground.

Netalitica’s test list project aims to address these issues by updating the lists for select censorship hot spots around the world and advance recommendations for streamlining the process of updating lists.

OONI Code of Conduct

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Last modified: April 16, 2026

Version: 1.4

OONI Code of Conduct

Statement of Intent

A primary goal of the OONI community is to be inclusive of many different contributors and to build a welcoming and enjoyable environment. We want to include contributors from the most varied and diverse backgrounds possible. We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment free from abuse, whether isolated or systemic. We explicitly acknowledge that tolerating abuse is a security problem. Allowing abusers and malicious people to disrupt our community puts our volunteers, developers, and users at risk.

OONI Data Policy

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Last modified: October 15, 2024

Version: 1.6.0

This Data Policy discloses and explains what data the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) project (“we”, “us”, or “our”) collects, processes, stores and publishes relating to the users of its OONI Probe software (“you” or “your”). This Data Policy also outlines the data principles that govern OONI’s data practices.

Data Principles

OONI Glossary

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Last updated: 3rd July 2023

This glossary contains brief explanations for terms used in OONI apps, methodologies, and research reports.

Translations:

Español, OONI Glosario
العربية, OONI Glossary
فارسی, OONI Glossary
Kiswahili, OONI Faharasa
Русский, OONI Глоссарий

If you would like to see additional terms in this glossary, please open a pull request or send us an email.

OONI Outreach Kit

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Community engagement is at the heart of OONI’s work, as OONI data on internet censorship depends on people running OONI Probe around the world.

Interested in engaging your communities with OONI censorship measurement?

The OONI Outreach Kit includes materials that you are encouraged to use as part of your OONI community engagement efforts.

The OONI Outreach Kit is translated into Russian, French, Spanish, Swahili, Arabic, Farsi.

OONI Brochures

We provide 2 OONI brochures that include information about using OONI tools and data for investigating internet censorship around the world.

OONI Partnership Program

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What is the OONI Partnership Program?

The OONI Partnership Program is a collaboration between the OONI team and groups or organizations around the world on the study of internet censorship. Such groups/organizations generally include digital rights organizations.

OONI Team

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Arturo Filastò

Executive Director & CTO
- Twitter
- Mastodon
- Email
- PGP Key
Maria Xynou

Director of Strategic Engagement

Open Culture Foundation (OCF)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Open Culture Foundation (OCF) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, founded in 2014 by several members of Taiwan’s open source community. Their main goal is to support local communities advocate the use of open technologies in broader sectors, including open source software, open hardware, and open data. They help government, enterprises, and NGOs better understand the benefits of adopting open source,and promote the importance of open data to the public sphere. They believe that a culture of open collaboration is the foundation for an innovative society, and the engine of a participatory democracy.

Open Net Korea

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Founded in January 2013, Open Net Korea is a non-profit organization that aims to provide a forum for discussion and collaboration to explore effective policies and solutions in the following areas: Freedom of Expression, Freedom from Surveillance, Reforming Innovation-blocking Regulations, Net Governance and Neutrality, Open Data Policy, and Reforming the Intellectual Property Regime.

Open Net Korea is aspiring to become not only a legal and legislative advocacy organization that fights the regulations, but also a think tank that inquires into the reasons for these regulations and “thinks aloud” with the Korean public and the world on what has caused and what will prevent the Internet from becoming a “closed” circuit for some group of people, instead of “open network”.

Other ways to donate to OONI

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thank you for your interest in supporting OONI’s mission. We deeply appreciate your support.

Bank Transfer / SEPA

You can donate to OONI by doing a wire transfer to the following bank information:

OutRight Action International

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

OutRight Action International works at a global, regional and national level to eradicate the persecution, inequality and violence lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) people face around the world. From its offices in 7 countries and headquarters in New York, OutRight builds capacity of LGBTIQ movements, documents human rights violations, advocates for inclusion and equality, and holds leaders accountable for protecting the rights of LGBTIQ people everywhere. OutRight has recognized consultative status at the United Nations.

Paradigm Initiative

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Paradigm Initiative is a social enterprise that builds an ICT-enabled support system and advocates digital rights in order to improve livelihoods for under-served youth. Their programs include digital inclusion programs – such as the Life Skills, ICT, Financial Readiness, Entrepreneurship (LIFE) training program and Tertiary program – and a digital rights program, Magoyi. Across their offices in Nigeria (Aba, Abuja, Ajegunle, Kano, Yaba), Cameroon (Yaoundé), Kenya (Nairobi), and beyond,they work to connect under-served youth with improved livelihoods through their digital inclusion and digital rights programs.

Privacy Policy

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Last modified: October 23, 2024

CONTROLLER

The controller for the processing of your data is OONI ETS (hereinafter referred to as “we”).

Psiphon

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

About Psiphon

Psiphon is a free and open source tool that utilizes VPN, SSH, and HTTP proxy technology for censorship circumvention. The Psiphon VPN essentially serves as a tunnel that enables you to circumvent censorship because you access resources on the internet through the non-censored tunnel that Psiphon provides.

Psiphon

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Since 2006, Psiphon has provided open access to the internet for millions of citizens around the world.

OONI collaborated with Psiphon on developing an OONI Probe test that measures whether the Psiphon app works in a tested network. This test is available through the OONI Probe mobile and desktop apps.

Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales (R3D)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales (R3D) is a Mexican non-profit organization dedicated to the defense of human rights in the digital environment. They use various legal and communication tools to conduct policy research, strategic litigation, public advocacy and campaigns with the aim of promoting digital rights in Mexico. In particular, freedom of expression, privacy, access to knowledge and free culture.

RiseupVPN

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

About RiseupVPN

RiseupVPN is a non-commercial, donation-based VPN service. It offers simple-to-use clients to secure your internet traffic against surveillance and to circumvent internet censorship. RiseupVPN doesn’t log any user data and doesn’t require registration. The software is based on LEAP VPN, an open source VPN solution, and is run by the Riseup collective which has been offering privacy-preserving online services for activists for more than 20 years.

Roskomsvoboda

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Roskomsvoboda is a Russian public organization that operates in the sphere of digital rights protection and digital empowerment.

It stands for the ideas of privacy and anonymity, freedom of information and prohibition of censorship, self-regulation of the IT industry and digital entrepreneurship, openness of the state and public control over the digital activities of government agencies.

Roskomsvoboda provides and implements different tools (technical, legal, events) that help censorship circumvention and allow users access independent information.

SAFEnet

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network (SAFEnet) is an Indonesian-based civil society organization working to defend digital rights in Southeast Asia. Since 2013, SAFEnet has been intensively monitoring digital rights violations, particularly in Indonesia, and supporting victims of the violation, as well as building capacity for CSOs about the issue and advocationg digital-related policy in the country.

Every year, SAFEnet publishes the Digital Rights Situation Report of Indonesia in Bahasa Indonesia and English, in addition of quarterly reports. It includes contextual information and access of internet analysis.

Signal test

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

About Signal

Signal is a free and open source messaging app for encrypted voice calls and instant messages.

Sinar Project

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Sinar Project is a civic tech initiative using open technology, open data and policy analysis to systematically make important information public and more accessible to the Malaysian people. It aims to improve governance and encourage greater citizen involvement in the public affairs of the nation by making Parliament and Malaysian Government more open, transparent and accountable.

Sinar Project has worked across Southeast Asia to engage local communities with censorship measurement research.

Software Freedom Law Centre, India

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Software Freedom Law Centre, India (SFLC.IN) is a donor supported legal services organisation that brings together lawyers, policy analysts, technologists, and students to protect freedom in the digital world. SFLC.IN promotes innovation and open access to knowledge by helping developers make great Free and Open Source Software, protect privacy and civil liberties for citizens in the digital world by educating and providing free legal advice and help policy makers make informed and just decisions with the use and adoption of technology.

Supporters & Funders

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Supporters are organisations or individuals who believe in OONI’s mission and have made significant in-kind donations to OONI in the last year. If you would like to become an OONI supporter, please reach out to us at giving@ooni.org.

Below we share a list of current and past OONI funders.

Octopus supporters

Dolphin Supporters

Seahorse Supporters

Starfish Supporters

This could be you!

TEDIC

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Association of Technology, Education, Development, Research, Communication (TEDIC) is an NGO that develops open civic technology and defends digital rights for a free culture on the Internet.

TEDIC promotes the use and development of free software and hardware, open design and open data. They seek for full compliance of civil rights on the Internet. They research, advocate and train in privacy, freedom of expression, network neutrality, copyright, among others.

Telegram test

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This test is designed to examine the reachability of Telegram’s app and web version within a tested network.

More specifically, this test attempts to perform an HTTP POST request, and establish a TCP connection to Telegram’s access points (DCs), as well as an HTTPS GET request to Telegram’s web version (web.telegram.org) over the vantage point of the user. The test is triggered as blocking when connections to all access points defined in the test fail.

Test Lists: Contribute websites for censorship testing

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Censorship findings are only as interesting as the sites and services that you test.

You can contribute websites for censorship testing through the following platforms:

Test Lists Editor (guide)
GitHub (guide)

Before contributing, please read the documentation below to learn all about test lists. We also recommend reading Netalitica’s Guidelines for Test List Researchers.

Thai Netizen Network

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thai Netizen Network is a leading non-profit organisation in Thailand that advocates for digital rights and civil liberties. Founded in December 2008, it grew out of a group of netizens who had concerns about limited internet freedom during post-coup governments.

Its activities are based on five themes: 1) access to information, 2) freedom of opinion and expression, 3) privacy, 4) participatory internet governance, and 5) rights over information resources. The Network is run by a small working group, with consultation from its members and an advisory board drawn from civil society, industry and academia. The group was officially registered as the “Foundation for Internet and Civic Culture” in May 2014.

Thank you for donating to OONI!

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thank you for supporting OONI. Your donation means a lot to us – it will help us support a global community fighting internet censorship and defend internet freedom.

To stay informed about OONI’s work, you can subscribe to our mailing list, join us on the OONI Slack channel, and follow us on social media:

Thanks again for your support! We are deeply grateful.

The Advocates for Human Rights and Democracy (TAHURID)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Advocates for Human Rights and Democracy (TAHURID) is an NGO in South Sudan working to promote and protect human rights and democracy through advocacy, capacity building, and legal representation in courts.

TAHURID aims to improve and safeguard the human dignity of every person by promoting and supporting the principles of democracy, human rights, rule of law, good governance and public accountability in South Sudan.

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS)

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The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives.

CIS has been actively involved in research and measurement of web censorship in India. CIS’ past work includes critical analysis of the Indian government’s power to block online content, the different techniques used by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to censor websites and the consistency of website blocklists across different ISPs in India.

The Citizen Lab

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The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto, focusing on research, development, and high-level strategic policy and legal engagement at the intersection of information and communication technologies, human rights, and global security.

They use a “mixed methods” approach to research combining practices from political science, law, computer science, and area studies. Their research includes: investigating digital espionage against civil society, documenting Internet filtering and other technologies and practices that impact freedom of expression online, analyzing privacy, security, and information controls of popular applications, and examining transparency and accountability mechanisms relevant to the relationship between corporations and state agencies regarding personal data and other surveillance activities.

The Tor Project

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Tor Project, Inc, became a 501(c)3 nonprofit in 2006, but the idea of “onion routing” began in the mid 1990s.

Just like Tor users, the developers, researchers, and founders who’ve made Tor possible are a diverse group of people. But all of the people who have been involved in Tor are united by a common belief: internet users should have private access to an uncensored web.

The Tor network, which is free and open source, provides its users with online anonymity, privacy, and censorship circumvention. Tor software is designed to bounce communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers around the world, thereby hiding its users’ IP addresses and enabling them to circumvent online tracking and internet censorship.

Thematic OONI Probe testing

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Social media, news websites, and VPNs often get blocked during political events (such as elections or protests) around the world.

To support rapid response to emergent censorship events, we share the following OONI Run buttons to enable the testing of specific types of websites.

Install the OONI Probe mobile app: Android, iOS, F-Droid
Tap the buttons below & open them with your OONI Probe mobile app (not with a browser)
Install the OONI Run link to your OONI Probe application if you are using Android device

Tor

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About Tor

Tor Bridge Reachability

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This test examines whether Tor bridges work in tested networks.

Tor is free and open source software which enables online anonymity and censorship circumvention. It was designed to bounce communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers around the world, thus hiding users’ IP address and circumventing online tracking and censorship. However, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in various countries around the world are often ordered by their governments to block users’ access to Tor. As a result, Tor bridges were developed to enable users to connect to the Tor network in countries where such access is blocked.

Tor Snowflake

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About Tor Snowflake

The Tor network, which is free and open source, provides its users with online anonymity, privacy, and censorship circumvention.

Tuwindi

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Tuwindi is a non-partisan, non-profit Malian law organization. Their goal is to use information and communication technologies to support social and economic development. Their mission is to propell economic and social development through the innovative use of ICT communication and information technologies.

User Guide: OONI Explorer

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Last updated: 15th March 2023

OONI Explorer is an open data resource on internet censorship around the world.

This user guide provides step-by-step instructions on how to use OONI Explorer to investigate internet censorship worldwide.

What you will get from this guide:

Learn how to use OONI Explorer to:
Discover blocked websites and apps around the world
Access measurement data that can serve as evidence of internet censorship

User Guide: OONI Probe Command Line Interface (CLI)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Last updated: 29th August 2022

OONI Probe CLI version: 3.9.2

OONI Probe is free and open source software that you can run to measure internet censorship and other forms of network interference.

This user guide provides step-by-step instructions on how to install and use the OONI Probe Command Line Interface (CLI).

You can run OONI Probe CLI on macOS, Debian/Ubuntu Linux, and on Raspberry Pis.

What you will get from this guide:

User Guide: OONI Probe Desktop App

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Last updated: 25th October 2022

OONI Probe Desktop version: 3.7.0

Access the OONI Probe Desktop user guide in other languages: فارسی, Русский, Deutsch, Türkçe, Tiếng Việt, Português

OONI Probe is a free and open source app that you can use to measure internet censorship and other forms of network interference. This user guide provides step-by-step instructions on how to install, run, and customize your use of the OONI Probe desktop app.

User Guide: OONI Probe Mobile App

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Last updated: 15th April 2025

OONI Probe Mobile version: 5.0.5

Access the user guide in other languages: فارسی, Русский, Deutsch, Türkçe, Tiếng Việt, မြန်မာ

What you will get from this guide:

User Guide: OONI Test Lists Editor

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Last updated: 7th September 2022

The OONI Test Lists Editor enables the public to review and contribute to the lists of websites (“test lists”) that are tested for censorship by OONI Probe users around the world.

This user guide provides step-by-step instructions on how to use the Test Lists Editor to review and contribute websites for censorship testing.

Upon reading this guide, we hope you will feel empowered to contribute to test lists!

Vanilla Tor

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This test measures the reachability of the Tor network (which is designed for online anonymity and censorship circumvention).

The Vanilla Tor test attempts to start a connection to the Tor network. If the test successfully bootstraps a connection within a predefined amount of seconds (300 by default), then Tor is considered to be reachable from the vantage point of the user. But if the test does not manage to establish a connection, then the Tor network is likely blocked within the tested network.

WhatsApp test

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This test is designed to examine the reachability of both WhatsApp’s app and the WhatsApp web version within a tested network.

OONI’s WhatsApp test attempts to perform an HTTP GET request, TCP connection and DNS lookup to WhatsApp’s endpoints, registration service and web version over the vantage point of the user. Based on this methodology, WhatsApp’s app is likely blocked if any of the following apply:

TCP connections to WhatsApp’s endpoints fail;

Zaina Foundation

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Founded in 2017, Zaina Foundation is a non-governmental, non-profit organization registered under NGO’s Act of 2002 with the aim of promoting digital rights in Tanzania.

Zaina Foundation’s vision is to empower women in technology through digital security and privacy capacity building, workshops and training. This is done by providing capacity building of digital security training to women and human rights defenders in Tanzania, localization and translation of open source tools in Swahili language in order to allow Swahili users to access secure tools for their communication. Moreover, Zaina Foundation monitors internet shutdowns in Tanzania. Through its UX Project, the organization tests open source tools, collects feedback from end users during training and shares such feedback with developers, in the quest to help improve the usability of digital security and censorship measurement tools.

Web Connectivity

Sat, 01 Jan 0000 00:00:00 +0000

This test examines whether websites (included in the Citizen Lab test lists) are reachable and if they are not, it attempts to determine whether access to them is blocked by means of DNS tampering, TCP/IP blocking or by a transparent HTTP proxy.

Specifically, this test is designed to perform the following:

Resolver identification
DNS lookup
TCP connect
HTTP GET request

By default, this test performs the above (excluding the first step, which is performed only over the network of the user) both over a control server and over the network of the user. If the results from both networks match, then there is no clear sign of network interference; but if the results are different, then the website that the user is testing is likely censored.

OONI: Open Observatory of Network Interference

Announcing OONI's New Anonymous Credential System

How Internet Censorship Impacts the Women’s Rights Movement in Iran: Insights from OONI Data and Activist Interviews

Protect Our Internet. Document Censorship – Support OONI Today.

Survey: How useful are the new OONI resources to you?

Throttling of Social Media in Türkiye During Protests: An Analysis of OONI Data

Information Controls in India and Pakistan During the May 2025 Conflict

Join us at the OMG Village at the Global Gathering 2025!

OONI Security Audit: Penetration Test Report

OONI Analysis on the Blocking of the X Social Media Platform in Tanzania

Introduction

[Event Report] India, Let's build the list 2025

OMG! Summary of the 3rd Open Measurement Gathering (OMG) Ask Me Anything (AMA) event

The Longest Silence: Internet Shutdowns During Bangladesh’s 2024 Uprising

OONI Analysis of Telegram Blocking in Kenya During the 2023 and 2024 KCSE Exams

Introduction

Launch: New OONI Explorer thematic censorship pages

About OONI Explorer

Requirements for OONI’s anonymous credentials system

A Legal and Technical Analysis of Internet Censorship in France

Key Findings

Introduction

Launch: New OONI Probe multiplatform app

Probe Security Without Identification

Year in Review: OONI in 2024

New OONI Foundation

Survey: Share your feedback on OONI tools, resources and documentation

Censorship Chronicles: The systematic suppression of independent media in Russia

iMAP 2024: State of Internet Censorship in 9 countries

Launch: Next generation OONI Run for community-driven censorship testing

Animation: OONI Partner Gathering 2024

Job Opening: OONI Backend Developer

Job description

OONI Community Interviews: Chido Musodza

Russia blocked OONI Explorer, a large open dataset on Internet censorship

Kazakhstan: TLS MITM attacks and blocking of news media, human rights, and circumvention tool sites

OONI Partner Gathering 2024 in Malaysia

OONI Community Interviews: Tawanda Mugari

Tanzania: Surge in online LGBTIQ censorship and other targeted blocks

Key Findings

Internet sanctions on Russian media: diverging actions and mixed effects

Year in Review: OONI in 2023

New OONI non-profit legal entity

OONI Community Interviews: Ihueze Nwobilor

Launch: New OONI Censorship Findings platform

Measure all the Things! IMC Hackathon 2023

iMAP 2023: State of Internet Censorship in 10 countries

OONI Community Interviews: Siti Nurliza

Grindr blocked in Jordan: Shrinking LGBTQ spaces

Background

Join us at the IMC 2023 Hackathon on Network Interference using Open Data

Senegal: Social media blocks and network outages amid political unrest

China is blocking OONI

New OONI Explorer features for investigating internet censorship through open data

Job Opening: OONI Project Manager

Job description

Brazil: OONI data on the blocking of Telegram

Throttling of news media amid Kazakhstan’s 2022 presidential election

Introducing OONI Probe Web

How we're improving OONI data quality: An analysis of failed measurements

Background

OONI measurements show ongoing internet censorship in Azerbaijan

How Internet censorship changed in Russia during the 1st year of military conflict in Ukraine

Ethiopia: Ongoing blocking of social media

Pakistan: Blocking of Wikipedia and Deutsche Welle (DW)

Turkey: Throttling and DNS blocking of Twitter following deadly earthquake

iMAP 2022: New Research Reports on Internet Censorship in 8 Asian countries

iMAP State of Internet Censorship Report 2022 - Cambodia

iMAP State of Internet Censorship Report 2022 - Hong Kong

iMAP State of Internet Censorship Report 2022 - Indonesia

iMAP State of Internet Censorship Report 2022 - Malaysia

iMAP State of Internet Censorship Report 2022 - Myanmar

Table of Contents

iMAP State of Internet Censorship Report 2022 - Philippines

iMAP State of Internet Censorship Report 2022 - Thailand

iMAP State of Internet Censorship Report 2022 - Vietnam

Year in Review: OONI in 2022

OONI Community Video

Featured community members and partners

Andrés Azpúrua, Venezuela Inteligente