Ahead of Chinese Communist Party's congress, WhatsApp blocked in most parts of China
Over the course of the past few months, Whatsapp had been experiencing brief disruptions in China. Users were unable to send photos or videos through the popular messaging service
Moneycontrol News
Ahead of Chinese Communist Party's 19th National Congress popular messaging app WhatsApp was reportedly blocked in China, with several users complaining on Twitter and other platforms saying that they could not access the app and their VPN connections had also been severed.
The move is a further blow for Facebook, whose home app was already blocked in China in 2009.
“This is not the typical technical method in which the Chinese government censors something,” said Nadim Kobeissi, an applied cryptographer at Symbolic Software, in a report by The New York Times.
The report says that China has 'a history of mostly, but not entirely, blocking internet services, as well as slowing them down so much that they become useless.'
According to Kobeissi, WhatsApp had started becoming more and more restricted since July and people had started facing hurdles in video chats, voice chats and file sharing in the app.
Kobeissi added that his company’s automated monitors had begun detecting disruptions of WhatsApp in China on Wednesday and by Monday the blocking efforts were comprehensive.
It took time for the China's "Great Firewall" to adapt to this new protocol to target the text messages, hence the delay in WhatsApp's blocking, according to Kobeissi.
The end-to-end encryption of WhatsApp that keeps users' messages private and does not leak user data is likely to have made it a prime target of China's Great Firewall.
China has tightened online policing this year, enacting new rules that require tech companies to store user data inside the country as well as restrictions on what is permissible content.
Chinese domestic apps like Wechat, in turn, provide all user’s personal data to the Chinese government.
Chinese government has clamped down on VPN too. It has become all the more difficult to access popular messaging apps like Facebook and Instagram from the country.Seems to be a be assault on VPNs in #China today. Also many people unable to use Whatsapp. https://t.co/J1ZGr42o2L
— Stephen McDonell (@StephenMcDonell) September 20, 2017
Anyone else experiencing almost total VPN breakdown in Beijing this morning?
— Tom Phillips (@tomphillipsin) September 20, 2017
On the other hand, Josh Chin, a political reporter for Wall Street Journal in Beijing, tweeted an update on the ban stating that the messaging service is supposedly back up.
The reporter took to Twitter to inform his followers the morning after WhatsApp was reportedly banned.Perils of reporting on censorship in China: A day after everyone reported WhatApp was blocked, it appears to be working again.
— Josh Chin 李肇华 (@joshchin) September 26, 2017
China has a history of blocking social media sites like Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and a number of Google’s services.
Apple’s Facetime and Microsft’s Skype still run in China, although the latter doesn’t provide end-to-end encryption.
