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DuckDuckGo coming back online in India following country-wide block

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Re: DuckDuckGo coming back online in India following country-wide block

#3

Post by BelleOfTheBall »

It's quite scary to think that some countries can just instantly axe access to important services like that. This time it was, supposedly, a mistake. What if next time they decide to block Wikipedia or something like that? I know they tried to block Telegram before the citizens pushed back.

Re: DuckDuckGo coming back online in India following country-wide block

#4

Post by virtuabhi »

BelleOfTheBall wrote: post #3

It's quite scary to think that some countries can just instantly axe access to important services like that. This time it was, supposedly, a mistake. What if next time they decide to block Wikipedia or something like that? I know they tried to block Telegram before the citizens pushed back.

Countries that block "Wikipedia or something like that" already exist. And citizens, corporations, and governments are fine with it.

Re: DuckDuckGo coming back online in India following country-wide block

#6

Post by geoffpado »

pmoriarty wrote: post #2

Somehow I find the unblock more troubling than the block, because it could mean that India has found a way to compromise DDG searches.

But… it was initially blocked when blocking several apps from China. Why would China being able to compromise it make it more likely to be unblocked by India?

Re: DuckDuckGo coming back online in India following country-wide block

#7

Post by bgdam »

saagarjha wrote: post #5

I'm curious how blocks happen in India. Does some random government agency just wake up one day and decide to block off part of the internet? Is there any sort of citizen involvement?

Pretty much. In addition there is no real enforcement to see that only the sites requested are blocked. And ISPs (Jio especially) have started taking creative license with block orders. For a lot of ISPs this blocking is implemented at DNS resolution level, which is easy to bypass (just change your DNS resolver), but the most popular ISP (Jio) does not do it this way, and is pretty much impossible to get around.

Re: DuckDuckGo coming back online in India following country-wide block

#8

Post by anonms-coward »

bgdam wrote: post #7
saagarjha wrote: post #5

I'm curious how blocks happen in India. Does some random government agency just wake up one day and decide to block off part of the internet? Is there any sort of citizen involvement?

Pretty much. In addition there is no real enforcement to see that only the sites requested are blocked. And ISPs (Jio especially) have started taking creative license with block orders. For a lot of ISPs this blocking is implemented at DNS resolution level, which is easy to bypass (just change your DNS resolver), but the most popular ISP (Jio) does not do it this way, and is pretty much impossible to get around.

How does Jio do it? Would encrypted SNI help in thwarting that?

Re: DuckDuckGo coming back online in India following country-wide block

#9

Post by chopraaa »

DDG was blocked for the past several days. The issue came up on /r/duckduckgo and /r/india, following which the Internet Freedom Foundation wrote to the Department of Telecom [1]

DDG is working for me again (it's my default search engine) so that's a relief. In the past, the government or the ISPs in India have nonchalantly blocked several websites and even NSFW sub-reddits. The IFF even has a dump of blocking orders issued by courts leaked by a whistleblower. [2]

[1] https://internetfreedom.in/blocking-of-duckduckgo-needs-to-b...

[2] https://internetfreedom.in/whistleblower-provides-website-bl...

Re: DuckDuckGo coming back online in India following country-wide block

#10

Post by iorrus »

virtuabhi wrote: post #4
BelleOfTheBall wrote: post #3

It's quite scary to think that some countries can just instantly axe access to important services like that. This time it was, supposedly, a mistake. What if next time they decide to block Wikipedia or something like that? I know they tried to block Telegram before the citizens pushed back.

Countries that block "Wikipedia or something like that" already exist. And citizens, corporations, and governments are fine with it.

Are citizens really fine with this? Most of the blocking countries have an active underground VPN scene.
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