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Tell HN: HN is now blocked by UAE proxy
I noticed yesterday that HN is now blocked by Etisalat, one of the United Arab Emirates' two telecom companies. Their proxy server displays a page like this instead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Block_etisalat_3.jpg
Sites usually get blocked because a customer complained to Etisalat about their content, or because they were arbitrarily added to the SmartFilter database. I think it's the latter in this case.
I will follow up with Etisalat and let you know if I make any progress...
- keefe 16y agoin the non-english nanny state you really wonder how HACKER news got b& when most americans conflate hacker/cracker? I think you'll hit a wall pretty quick. Some bureaucrat saw hacker or maybe even realized there IS disruptive info here and ban it went.
- pg 16y agoEither that or it's a clever move to make the country more productive.
- andrewtj 16y agoDoes http://apps.ycombinator.com/ http://apps.ycombinator.com/ work?
- phugoid 16y agoYes it does from inside the UAE. Thanks for the hint.
- TomOfTTB 16y agoAfter reading this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etisalat#Internet_Censorship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etisalat#Internet_Censorship I'm forced to conclude we all must be doing something right.
- alnayyir 16y agoIf you take a moment to pause the "ra ra shish koom ba" cheerleading, it's worth contemplating what manner of content this site would have that would've caused this.
- alextingle 16y ago"Websites criticizing the United Arab Emirates" I think this is about to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- nonane 16y agohttps is a good way to get around the block. Unfortunately https on HN redirects to http. edit: @andrewtj : yes, http://apps.ycombinator.com http://apps.ycombinator.com works.
- uggedal 16y agoI think it's added to SmartFilter, I noticed that news.ycombinator.com was blocked at work yesterday. news.ycombinator.net works though.
- alextingle 16y agoNot very smart then, eh?
- paraschopra 16y agoyou can also use news.ycombinator.org
- prakash 16y agoAny HN users want to do a meetup in Dubai? My email is in my profile.
- nickcharlton 16y agoI noticed this yesterday at work (who use Etisalat). I emailed then, trying to explain the usual content of HN. Back at home though (on Du), it's not blocked. I suspect it is just an automatic block, but we'll see.
- snprbob86 16y agoI get a little bit more scared each time I hear this type of story. Is there any hope for clever technology which makes it impossible to intelligently filter traffic? Some sort of mesh networking something? Surely someone on HN must know the state of the art here.
- c1sc0 16y agoJust proxy/VPN out.
- csomar 16y agoOnly the future will tell if there Non-Smart automatic filters have detected it, or their Smart-Non-automatic filters.
- pavel_lishin 16y agoI liked their old image better: http://widgetsex.com/uae.png http://widgetsex.com/uae.png (disregard what looks like an NSFW domain, it's just a URL I bought on a whim. If you take off the image, you'll see my friend's dog, widget, winking at you in a suggestive-but-entirely-SFW manner.)
- threepointone 16y agoalso, http://hackerne.ws http://hackerne.ws would still work, I guess.