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Saudi Arabia Set To Ban WhatsApp, Skype

Posted by timothy on from the and-clear-envelopes-only-please dept.

Reuters reports that Saudi Arabia's government, after banning Viber within the kingdom, is poised to prohibit at least two other such communication apps: Skype and WhatsApp. Says the article: "Conventional international calls and texts are a lucrative earner for telecom operators in Saudi Arabia, which hosts around nine million expatriates. These foreign workers are increasingly using Internet-based applications such as Viber to communicate with relatives in other countries, analysts say." With fewer legal options, a wide-scale Internet censorship regime would be easier to implement, too.

3 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Cat & mouse game will continue... by Bearhouse · · Score: 5, Informative

    This has been going on for a long time - Skype was banned or crippled in the UAE for a long time, but recently unblocked:

    http://english.alarabiya.net/en/business/technology/2013/04/08/Etisalat-unblocks-Skype-website-in-the-UAE.html

    At the time, it was more about securing revenue from the lucrative expat market than locking-down protest movements.
    Of course, these latter do exist, but less so in Saudi & UAE than, say, Egypt.

    I guess this latest move will just drive more interest in alternatives, which are often 'open' and perhaps more secure...

    http://www.pidgin.im/

    http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/fed-up-with-skype-here-are-6-of-the-best-free-alternatives/

  2. Free and open source messaging alternatives by trawg · · Score: 4, Informative

    Apropos of absolutely nothing, here's some open source alternatives that also offer encryption (YMMV on how robust the encryption is).

    - Jitsi (formerly SIP Communicator) is an audio/video and chat communicator that supports protocols such as SIP, XMPP/Jabber as well as a bunch of other protocols. Set up an XMPP server wherever you want and you're done. (I tried to set up Jabber to use with it on a Linux box on the weekend though and hit a few roadblocks, but more tech savvy people can probably power through them.)

    - Mumble - voice communications, intended primarily for gaming but will work with anything. Run your own voice servers and clients connect in, a la TeamSpeak/Ventrilo.

    - RetroShare - decentralised p2p file sharing and messaging system.

  3. Re:kill them all by Chrisq · · Score: 4, Informative
    Well from Worldwide Trends in Honor Killings:

    Although Sikhs and Hindus do sometimes commit such murders, honor killings, both worldwide and in the West, are mainly Muslim-on-Muslim crimes. In this study, worldwide, 91 percent of perpetrators were Muslims.

    So, yes there are some evil Hindu and Sikhs, but it is not entrenched as a specific commandment in the religion like in Islam