5/24/22, 7:45 PM
Myanmar: Data on internet blocks and internet outages following military coup | OONI
(59.153.90.11, 167.172.4.60) or an address in private IP
space (such as 127.0.0.1 or 172.29.8.1);
Some measurements were successful (i.e. the tested
websites were found accessible), showing that the blocks
are not implemented deterministically over time on all
networks.
While OONI measurements show that Telegram has been
reachable in Myanmar, both WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger
presented signs of blocking during their testing throughout
February 2021. Similarly to the testing of social media websites, we
observe both DNS based tampering and IP blocking of WhatsApp
and Facebook, which varies from network to network (and in some
cases, we observe ISPs adopting a mixture of censorship
techniques).
In the testing of Facebook Messenger, there are cases where all
attempted TCP connections to Facebook’s endpoints failed, and
there are other cases where DNS lookups to domains associated
with Facebook do not resolve to IP addresses allocated to
Facebook. In the testing of WhatsApp, we observe interference
with WhatsApp web (web.whatsapp.com) and WhatsApp’s
registration service, though attempted connections to WhatsApp’s
endpoints are often successful (this is observed on several
networks).
The following chart illustrates the testing of WhatsApp and
Facebook Messenger (across networks) in Myanmar throughout
February 2021, based on OONI data.
Source: OONI measurements collected from Myanmar throughout
February 2021, https://explorer.ooni.org/search?until=2021-0228&since=2021-02-01&probe_cc=MM
As is evident from the above chart, WhatsApp and Facebook
Messenger presented signs of blocking most times that they were
tested in Myanmar throughout February 2021. The high volume of
anomalous measurements (across many different networks)
provides a strong signal of blocking, particularly since this is not
observed in past measurements (before February 2021). It’s worth
noting though that some measurements (collected in February
2021) were successful (i.e. the tested apps were reachable),
suggesting that the blocks are not deterministic across networks in
Myanmar.
Today, OONI data suggests the ongoing blocking of Facebook,
Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Instagram in
Myanmar.
Blocking of Wikipedia
Starting from 20th February 2021, we started to observe the
blocking of Wikipedia in Myanmar as well (though the first
https://ooni.org/post/2021-myanmar-internet-blocks-and-outages/
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