

Tell HN: HN is now blocked by UAE proxy - phugoid

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<p>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.<p>I will follow up with Etisalat and let you know if I make any progress...
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TomOfTTB
After reading this:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etisalat#Internet_Censorship>

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

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alextingle
"Websites criticizing the United Arab Emirates"

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

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andrewtj
Does <http://apps.ycombinator.com/> work?

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phugoid
Yes it does from inside the UAE. Thanks for the hint.

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uggedal
I think it's added to SmartFilter, I noticed that news.ycombinator.com was
blocked at work yesterday. news.ycombinator.net works though.

~~~
alextingle
Not very smart then, eh?

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nickcharlton
I noticed this yesterday at work (who use Etisalat). I emailed then, trying to
explain the usual content of HN.

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

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

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keefe
in the non-english nanny state you really wonder how HACKER news got b& when
most americans conflate hacker/cracker?

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

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pg
Either that or it's a clever move to make the country more productive.

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snprbob86
I get a little bit more scared each time I hear this type of story. Is there
any hope for clever technology which makes it impossible to intelligently
filter traffic? Some sort of mesh networking something? Surely someone on HN
must know the state of the art here.

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c1sc0
Just proxy/VPN out.

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nonane
https is a good way to get around the block. Unfortunately https on HN
redirects to http.

edit:

@andrewtj : yes, <http://apps.ycombinator.com> works.

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pavel_lishin
I liked their old image better: <http://widgetsex.com/uae.png>

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

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prakash
Any HN users want to do a meetup in Dubai? My email is in my profile.

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csomar
Only the future will tell if there Non-Smart automatic filters have detected
it, or their Smart-Non-automatic filters.

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threepointone
also, <http://hackerne.ws> would still work, I guess.

