In a major blow to Zuckerberg, China completely blocks WhatsApp
26 Sep 2017 4:29 PM GMT
San Francisco/Beijing: After blocking videos, voice chats and images on WhatsApp, China has now blocked texting on Facebook-owned popular mobile messaging service — sending out a stern message to CEO Mark Zuckerberg who has been trying his best to re-enter the country.
According to a CNN report late on Monday, the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), a global observation network for detecting censorship, surveillance and traffic manipulation, suggested that Chinese internet service providers started blocking access to WhatsApp.
Public reports on Twitter indicated that WhatsApp became inaccessible for some people on September 19. Over the last few months, there were a number of WhatsApp disruptions in China.
"The blocking of WhatsApp text messages suggests that China's censors may have developed specialised software to interfere with such messages, which rely on an encryption technology that is used by few services other than WhatsApp," The New York Times reported.
The move came ahead of a key Communist Party Congress on October 18 at which President Xi Jinping will begin his second five-year term as head of the ruling party.
However, WhatsApp was yet to make an official announcement on the development. China has already blocked access to a number of internet companies, including Facebook (since 2009), Instagram, Twitter and Google.
Some people still access these services through virtual private networks (VPN), or with tools that disguise internet traffic to circumvent censorship. But the Chinese government has launched a crack down on VPNs this year.
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