By
Khaled A., on March 16th, 2010
Update: It got unblocked fast! According to my inside source this post triggered an auto block. My guess “الجنس” caused it 
.
Now here’s something you don’t see getting blocked: a development website. Oh wait, you do see stupid blocks all the time! ArDroid.com is an Arabic website dedicated development of Arabic applications for the Google Android platform. It’s a well known site and I blogged about their efforts on my personal site.
Only reason I can think of is stupidity … either that or that it’s a mistake.
To help getting it unblocked as soon as possible fill the form at internet.gov.sa, write an email to unblock@internet.gov.sa or send a fax to +966(1)2639290.
By
Khaled A., on March 15th, 2010
Respectq.net (Google cache) looks like a normal blog and hardly any content worth blocking.
Most likely blocked for this post (Google cache) which talks about “We Hate CITC” website.
To help getting it unblocked as soon as possible fill the form at internet.gov.sa, write an email to unblock@internet.gov.sa or send a fax to +966(1)2639290.
Updated a bit.
By
Khaled A., on February 22nd, 2010
Anime News Network (www.animenewsnetwork.com), a very popular Anime news website was suddenly blocked in Saudi Arabia sometime last week according to @Shinryoma.
Anime News Network was never blocked in the country. Anime is not porn, CITC.
Update: Thanks @Turke and @Missice81 for telling me this. Manga Fox ( www.mangafox.com ) a Manga source, as been blocked as well! What’s next? One Manga? Manga Stream?
To help getting it unblocked as soon as possible fill the form at internet.gov.sa, write an email to unblock@internet.gov.sa or send a fax to +966(1)2639290.
By
Khaled A., on February 16th, 2010
Update: More people are having problems (here and here). The problem is apparently caused by using any external DNS (Google DNS for example). This is very weird.
This is not surprising. Some STC customers (including me, Muneeb in Dhahran and Abdullah in Riyadh) are having problems accessing Google. This appears to be random because others told me that it’s working properly.
This is not only effecting searches but Google Reader, Google Analytics, Youtube and other services! This is the error message by the way:
Network Error (tcp_error)
A communication error occurred: “Operation timed out”
The Web Server may be down, too busy, or experiencing other problems preventing it from responding to requests. You may wish to try again at a later time.
For assistance, contact your network support team.
Please, STC: fix your servers already.
By
Khaled A., on December 30th, 2009
Domain Tools (not blocked) is an online tool for webmasters. Their WHOIS service (formally known as whois.sc) is now blocked. The blocked URL is:
whois.domaintools.com
WHOIS is a harmless protocol used to look-up domain names, etc. There is no reason what so ever for having it blocked. Read more about WHOIS on Wikipedia.
To help getting it unblocked as soon as possible fill the form at internet.gov.sa, write an email to unblock@internet.gov.sa or send a fax to +966(1)2639290.
By
Khaled A., on December 7th, 2009
Google’s very own “Google Groups Guide” Google group is blocked for no known reason. This is a Google Groups help and support forum. Here’s more info about it:
The Google Groups Help Forum is the primary channel for getting your Groups questions answered. You’ll find that this community is always buzzing with activity. Get ready to meet some expert users of Google Groups who’ll provide friendly advice about the product (if you’re nice to them). The Google Groups Guide and Groups Guide Ray, Google employees, regularly monitor this unmoderated Help Forum. The Guides will only respond to questions if there is valuable information to share with our users that has not already been provided by the Forum’s resident experts! Messages from Google employees will appear with a blue “G” badge.
From the description I see no reason to have it blocked. Here is the blocked URL:
http://groups.google.com/group/google-groups-guide/
To help getting it unblocked as soon as possible fill the form at internet.gov.sa, write an email to unblock@internet.gov.sa or send a fax to +966(1)2639290.
By
Khaled A., on October 17th, 2009
Here are the STC Afaq DSL Shamil modem passwords. Thanks to Aly in the comments of this post for posting these.
This will hopefully help frustrated users who can’t change the settings:
Sagem - F@st 1201 (Sagem Firmware) admin admin
Sagem - F@st 2404 (Sagem Firmware) admin admin
Sagem - F@st 2504 (Sky Firmware) admin sky
Sagem - F@st 2604 (JaWeb French Firmware) admin admin
Sagem - F@st 3102 (Sagem Firmware) user user
Sagem - FST 3202 (Livebox English Firmware) admin admin
Sagem - FST 3202 (Livebox French Firmware) admin admin
Check the comments provided kindly by Aly for more info.
By
Khaled A., on October 14th, 2009
Update: a friend forwarded this to me “We would like to inform you that the Internet service has been restored. According to the ISP, the problem was in the IGW which caused slowness in internet browsing”. IGW is managed by STC apparently.
Everyone (at least in Riyadh) is complaining about extremely slow Internet connection (twitter links: 1, 2, 3, 4).
I noticed it as well, here is my speedtest.net results with STC’s server:
Of course it takes full advantage of my DSL bandwidth. It’s like running a speed test on a local Intranet.
However try a US based speedtest server and you get:
Very slow, it’s taking me an hour to upload 1MB via FTP! Do you have similar problems? Please share below.
By
Khaled A., on August 26th, 2009
Megaupload (www.megaupload.com) is a file hosting service similar to RapidShare. You can use it to send large files if you can’t email them. The Wikipedia article about it is inaccurate as it claims that KACST is responsible for blocking and we all know that CITC is handling it now.
I should add that RapidShare was blocked but now it has been unblocked for a while. Megaupload can be unblocked too!
We should get it unblocked as soon as possible and to do so fill the form at internet.gov.sa, write an email to unblock@internet.gov.sa or send a fax to +966(1)2639290.
By
Khaled A., on August 2nd, 2009
The Google Wireless Transcoder is a simple tool that rearranges websites for mobile phone web browsers. This service is enabled by default on Google searches made on Nokia phones without an easy method to disable them.
The service is completely blocked in Saudi Arabia and most mobile phone users are annoyed by this block. It is easy to have a smart filter on google.com/gwt/n instead of blocking the whole service.
Let’s get it unlocked as soon as possible and to do so fill the form at internet.gov.sa, write an email to unblock@internet.gov.sa or send a fax to +966(1)2639290.
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