After Porn, Telegram And SoundCloud Banned By Reliance Jio

ByAnmol Sachdeva
Reliance Jio bans telegram and soundcloud
Image: Shutterstock

Reliance Jio banned more than 800 porn websites in October 2018 after a rape accused admitted that he watched explicit videos before raping an underage student. Despite the ban, Indians accessed porn websites using proxy servers, VPNs and private DNS. So, Jio banned such services too.

Now, Telegram and Soundcloud have also been added to the list of blocked websites by the telecom operator. A series of tweets by the Internet Freedom Foundation which defends net neutrality and privacy in India brought the issue to notice.

Out of the 135 complaints reported to IFF, a majority(85) of plaintiffs reported the ban on Jio network while 41 users reported that the websites are inaccessible from Airtel as well. The remaining complainants belonged to ISPs like ACT Fibernet and Hathaway.

IFF curated a list of 135 complaints and lodged an RTI (Right To Information) to Department of Telecom about the banning of popular sites and services. In response to the RTI, the department cited secrecy provisions behind the ban.

The small number of complaints have rendered the issue unheard, and therefore IFF has asked users who are facing banning of Telegram and Soundcloud to come forward and inform them.

Banning of websites like Telegram, which is a popular messaging service using end-to-end encryption, and Soundcloud is a direct attack on internet freedom and violation of net neutrality rules in India .

Also Read: Indian Politicians’ Tweets Can Be Easily Doctored; Here’s How

Anmol is a tech journalist who handles reportage of cybersecurity and Apple and OnePlus devices at Fossbytes. He's an ambivert who is striving hard to appease existential crisis by eating, writing, and scrolling through memes.

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