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Multiple service providers are blocking DuckDuckGo in India

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1–10 of 48 posts

Re: Multiple service providers are blocking DuckDuckGo in India

#3
Looks like a glitch (as the reddit thread indicates). DDG works fine on BSNL.

Note that r/India is very intolerant of views which are pro-India, and has consequently become an echo chamber for endia folk. I'd take anything coming out of this subred with a bucket of salt.

Re: Multiple service providers are blocking DuckDuckGo in India

#4

Is there any precedent for this in India (blocking a search engine or other 'utility' website, as opposed to specific content)?

They block websites and URLs all the time. Often times, there won’t be any justification (or even logic) behind the action — they’ve even blocked gist.github.com once.

Re: Multiple service providers are blocking DuckDuckGo in India

#5
> Meanwhile, DuckDuckGo confirmed on Twitter that it’s looking into the issue and suggested Android users change their DNS provider to get around the issue.

If changing DNS works, how is this blocked by the ISP? Seems to indicate there is some other technical problem. Treat the rest of the article, and specially with tweets, with skepticism.

Re: Multiple service providers are blocking DuckDuckGo in India

#6
India, ruled by some big(!) heads who doesn't understand a dot in technology. They are governed by impulsive decisions of the policy makers and it's a name sake democracy. No real freedom of speech is allowed there AFAIK. Govt / Private / Policing is just too much and a lot of gag order as well. They just can't stand anything and consequences could cost a life too! Technology is being used by most of the population who doesn't even know what is behind the scenes. ISPs utilise it do whatever they want and there is a ruling body known as TRAI / DOT which doesn't care to explain the rationale behind any of their decisions for blocking / banning etc., God save that country!

Re: Multiple service providers are blocking DuckDuckGo in India

#7

> Meanwhile, DuckDuckGo confirmed on Twitter that it’s looking into the issue and suggested Android users change their DNS provider to get around the issue. If changing DNS works, how is this blocked by the ISP? Seems to indicate there is some other technical problem. Treat the rest of the article, and specially with tweets, with skepticism.

They simply filter out DNS records on their caching DNS server that they provide to their users.

Re: Multiple service providers are blocking DuckDuckGo in India

#8

> Meanwhile, DuckDuckGo confirmed on Twitter that it’s looking into the issue and suggested Android users change their DNS provider to get around the issue. If changing DNS works, how is this blocked by the ISP? Seems to indicate there is some other technical problem. Treat the rest of the article, and specially with tweets, with skepticism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_blocking

Re: Multiple service providers are blocking DuckDuckGo in India

#9

> Meanwhile, DuckDuckGo confirmed on Twitter that it’s looking into the issue and suggested Android users change their DNS provider to get around the issue. If changing DNS works, how is this blocked by the ISP? Seems to indicate there is some other technical problem. Treat the rest of the article, and specially with tweets, with skepticism.

Haven’t been back in India for a while, but the DNS blocking happens all the time. One big provider (AirTel) even injected ads in non-https pages quite frequently.

Anecdotally, I had a cable service in Delhi where the provider started throttling me if I didn’t make any request to their dns server in some arbitrary time interval. So changing your dns might not be the fix (i fixed it by sending random queries to their server...).

Re: Multiple service providers are blocking DuckDuckGo in India

#10

India, ruled by some big(!) heads who doesn't understand a dot in technology. They are governed by impulsive decisions of the policy makers and it's a name sake democracy. No real freedom of speech is allowed there AFAIK. Govt / Private / Policing is just too much and a lot of gag order as well. They just can't stand anything and consequences could cost a life too! Technology is being used by most of the population w…

> there is a ruling body known as TRAI / DOT which doesn't care to explain the rationale behind any of their decisions for blocking / banning etc.

This is a big misconception in India. The URL blocking for the major part is ordered by courts and not the government - https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/ban-porn-sit...

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