Baku, Azerbaijan, April 30
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Iran has banned access to WhatsApp messenger application in the country.
The secretary of the Committee for Determining Criminal Web Content, Abdolsamad Khorramabadi said that the committee has made the decision by the end of the last Iranian calendar year (ended on March 20), Iranian ISNA news agency reported on April 30.
Khorramabadi went on to say that the Information and Communications Technology Ministry has not implemented the decision yet, however the committee has officially informed the ministry about it.
While responding to a question about the reasons behind the ban, Khorramabadi denied to unveil further details, saying the Information and Communications Technology Ministry should issue a response to that.
The official also said that the committee has not made decision yet on filtering other smart phone network applications such as Viber, Tango and Instagram.
Maybe in the future the committee will look into blocking the applications, he added.
Iran already made decision to block access to another social network application WeChat last December.
The Committee for Determining Criminal Web Content which is headed by the prosecutor general of Iran, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei was established in 2009.
The committee has 13 members including 6 ministers from Iranian president Hassan Rouhani`s cabinet.
Several of world's most popular networks, such as Twitter and Facebook are banned in Iran, while users are still able to access them via proxies. For the geeks uninitiated in the world of computer, a proxy allows bypassing 'gates' meant to block certain sites.
The Iranian authorities banned Facebook and Twitter in summer 2009 when ex-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election victory sparked off massive protests that gained momentum with the help of organizers using social media.