Saudi TechView » Saudi Internet

You are not allowed to Stumble Upon anything [Blocked in Saudi]

Khaled A. — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 22:20:36 +0000

Hey, long time no see? Sorry I’ve been busy with SaudiMac so you will see less updates here. Sorry again. Now on with the show!

The latest victim of the CITC is the popular social bookmark sharing website StumbleUpon. From Wikipedia:

StumbleUpon is a discovery engine (a form of web search engine) that finds and recommends web content to its users. Its features allow users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos that are personalized to their tastes and interests using peer-sourcing and social-networking principles.

So it got blocked now. Must be blocked by the same guy who blocked tinyurl.

Nimbuzz chat service blocked in Saudi Arabia

Khaled A. — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 20:00:54 +0000

Nimbuzz is an instant messaging and Voice of IP service available for many platforms; Windows, Mac, iPhone and so on.

For some strange reason nimbuzz.com has been blocked in Saudi Arabia. As if the recent FaceTime deactivation was not enough.

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.

YouTube “Videos” blocked in Saudi Arabia

Khaled A. — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 21:38:34 +0000

You can no longer browse YouTube videos. For some strange reason the following url has been blocked:

http://www.youtube.com/videos

This is YouTube’s directory of videos, could this be the first step to fully block YouTube in Saudi Arabia (again)? Now you can no longer browse videos on YouTube.

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.

Travian.ae blocked to boost the Saudi Travian server?

Khaled A. — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:09:27 +0000

Travian.ae has been blocked in Saudi Arabia a few days ago. This noticeably effected the site’s “alexa ranking” as you can see here:

Here’s something weird that I discovered: there is a Travian.com.sa, a Saudi Travian domain! So why did CITC block travian.ae and not travian.com.sa? Saudi players have been playing on the UAE servers for years now.

Here are the WHOIS info for both domains. This is TRAVIAN.AE:

Domain Name travian.ae

Registrar ID 123DOMAIN
Registrar Name Klute-Thiemann Infomationstechnologie GmbH&Co.KG
Status ok
Registrant Contact ID KT-259733205
Registrant Contact Name Travian Games GmbH
Registrant Contact Email domain_master@traviangames.com
Tech Contact ID KT-037219030
Tech Contact Name Siegfried Mueller
Tech Contact Email domain_adminc@traviangames.com
Name Server ns01.travian.org
Name Server ns02.travian.com
Name Server ns03.travian.net

This is TRAVIAN.COM.SA:

domain: travian.com.sa
organization: Travian Games GmbH
address: Wilhelm-Wagenfeld-Str.22
address: P.O.Box 305150
address: 80807 Munchen
address: Germany
admin-c: SM187-SA
tech-c: TK27-SA
reg-c: TK28-SA
nserver: ns01.travian.org
nserver: ns02.travian.com
nserver: ns03.travian.net
req-date: 2009-05-27
reg-date: 2009-05-30
source: SaudiNIC

Could Travian.ae be blocked just to boost Travian.com.sa’s numbers? The more players on the Saudi server would mean more money from premium Travian players.

What do you think? What other reason is there to block the biggest Saudi server (Travian.ae)?

Travian blocked in Saudi Arabia, productivity skyrockets

Khaled A. — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 11:47:04 +0000

Online gaming website Travian has been blocked in Saudi Arabia. At the time only the Arabic interface version (www.travian.ae/) has been blocked. You can still access the original website.

If you really care about it then you know where to fill the forms to have it unblocked. This is one block I do not mind .

Sections of Flickr are still blocked in Saudi Arabia

Khaled A. — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 12:46:14 +0000

I will not understand the logic here. I was browsing for Apple Store photos and found out that this image was blocked. Here’s what I noticed. This URL, for example, is blocked:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/76/

Before they used to block: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/ now only a section is blocked.

You can’t block content like that, it is annoying for legit Flickr users. Here’s an example of a typical Flickr page now:

I found the following blocked folders, I will add the ones I find:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/76/

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/53/

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/54/

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/47/

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.

Blocked in Saudi: Arabic Android development: Ardroid (update: unblocked)

Khaled A. — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:00:27 +0000

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.

Blocked in Saudi Arabia: respectq.net (update: unblocked)

Khaled A. — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:19:42 +0000

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.

Anime News Network suddenly blocked in Saudi Arabia (Manga Fox unblocked)

Khaled A. — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:57:17 +0000

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?

Update 2: Manga Fox unblocked.

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.

Google isn’t working for some STC subscribers (update: might be DNS)

Khaled A. — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:47:50 +0000

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.