Analysis of global takedown attempts targeting Qurium’s Bifrost Mirrors
Qurium Media Foundation has uncovered multiple takedown requests submitted to Google targeting its Bifrost mirror service, an initiative designed to keep independent journalism accessible in countries with heavy Internet censorship. Qurium’s investigation reveals coordinated international efforts to suppress journalism and erase investigative reporting through legal mechanisms. The takedown demands came from state-linked institutions and reputation management firms operating in Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Russia, and Venezuela.
Independent Philippine media “Bulatlat” blocked by Smart Broadband
Starting the 16th June 2022, Qurium received reports that users of Smart Broadband in the Philippines were not able to reach the independent media outlet Bulatlat.com. The users’ browsers were returning errors related to failing DNS resolution. Qurium looked into the logs of its DNS servers and recorded the last DNS request coming from Smart […]
Myanmar junta keeps expanding the secret block list
– Understanding DNS blocking in Myanmar In August 2020, Qurium released the report Internet blocking in Myanmar – secret block list and no means to appeal, describing how the Myanmar authorities are forcing all operators to silently block a large number of news websites without informing the targeted organizations about the blocking order nor providing […]
Togoweb.net blocked by Deep Packet Inspection
Togoweb, a media project funded in 2017 after the 2017-2018 Togolese protests by Aic Persepectiv, is known for the critical reporting about the Togolese government. According to Togoweb, their website was first blocked after the presidential election in February 2020. The blocking was in place from the 15th of March 2020 and was removed 10 months […]
Nigeria attempts to silence the investigative media Peoples Gazette by ordering blocking
People Gazette is a new independent investigative Nigerian news site, that during its first four months in operations has revealed illicit financial transactions of Nigeria’s political elites and broken several exclusive stories that have affected the closest ring around president Buhari. The online newspaper has quickly gained popularity in Nigeria because of it daring evidence-based […]
Telegram Latency in Belarus
In the end of October 2020, Qurium received reports from users in Belarus that Telegram service was not working properly. Although the service was reachable, an increased latency was noted among the users. In order to confirm if it was introduced by operators, Qurium has been monitoring the behavior of the Telegram service from different […]
Internet blocking in Belarus
Following the controversial presidential elections in August 2020, where incumbent president Lukashenko won a “landslide victory” with 80% of the votes, the people of Belarus went to the streets to show their dissatisfaction and claimed the election result to be fraudulent. The protests quickly grow and the authorities responded with widespread and violent arrests, Internet […]
How operators use Sandvine to block independent media in Egypt
Internet blocking is a common tool for the Egyptian authorities to silent dissidents or those that think and speak freely. Currently, more than 600 websites are blocked, more than hundred of those are media and news websites. In April 2020, Internet operators in Egypt made changes to their blocking strategy and started to block subdomains […]
Colombo Telegraph blocked by Dialog Axiata
During the late evening of August 19th, Qurium detected a sudden drop of Internet traffic from visitors of Colombo Telegraph from the operator Dialog Axiata. When attempting to visit Colombo Telegraph via Dialog, the readers received the error message: ERR_CONNECTION_TIME_OUT Qurium looked into Dialog Axiata infrastructure and its core network and could conclude that traffic […]
“Sudans Post” gets blocked after receiving personal threats from NSS – transcript revealed
Sudans Post is a grass roots news media organization aiming to provide readers with an alternate depiction of events that occur in Sudan, South Sudan and East Africa. After publishing a series of articles in June 2020 related to the Sudanese business women Achai Wiir, the newspaper started to receive threats from the National Security […]
