Global study shows targeted internet censorship worldwide, with Russia leading; VPNs, news, and adult content are most frequently blocked categories.

The Global Internet Censorship Index 2026 offers a clear view of how governments around the world control online access. Researchers tested 74 popular websites across 53 countries using residential proxies to simulate real users. After removing false positives caused by anti-bot protections, they analyzed 58 sites to identify genuine censorship patterns.

One of the key findings is that countries don’t block the entire internet. Instead, they selectively restrict specific categories of content based on political, cultural, or security priorities. This targeted approach reveals a lot about each government’s concerns and objectives.

At the top of the censorship ranking is Russia, which blocks a wide range of content, including independent media, messaging apps, LGBTQ+ resources, and tools used to bypass censorship.

“Russia leads our censorship index, blocking independent news (Meduza, Bellingcat), messaging apps (Telegram, WhatsApp), LGBTQ+ resources, and anti-censorship tools.” reads the report. “Countries don’t simply block “the internet”. Instead, they make targeted choices on which website categories to restrict, revealing their political priorities.”

Other countries with notable restrictions include the UAE, Bahrain, Belarus, and Pakistan, each with its own focus. For example, Belarus mainly targets human rights organizations and independent journalism, while Pakistan focuses heavily on encrypted communication tools.

The study also shows that democratic countries generally score very high in terms of openness, with most allowing access to nearly all tested websites. Differences between countries become more noticeable lower in the ranking, where restrictions increase.

Looking at what gets blocked most often, adult content leads the list, restricted in 16 countries across regions like the Middle East and South Asia. VPNs and anti-censorship tools are another major target, especially in Gulf countries. This creates a layered censorship model: first block content, then block the tools that could bypass those restrictions.

Independent news outlets and investigative journalism platforms are also frequent targets. For instance, Russia blocks sites like Meduza and Bellingcat, while Vietnam and Belarus restrict access to international media and watchdog organizations. LGBTQ+ resources face restrictions in countries such as Russia and the UAE, reflecting local legal and cultural positions.

Messaging platforms are another area of concern. Russia blocks Telegram and WhatsApp web versions, Pakistan blocks Signal, and countries like Turkey and Bangladesh restrict Discord. These actions show a clear effort to control communication channels.

From a technical perspective, many countries rely on advanced methods like SSL interception, which allows them to inspect and block encrypted traffic. This indicates significant investment in surveillance infrastructure. Other techniques include DNS blocking, connection resets, and redirects to warning pages.

The report also highlights limitations in measuring censorship. For example, China appeared less restrictive in the data, but this is due to how its Great Firewall works, using DNS poisoning and IP blocking methods that residential proxies can sometimes bypass. This means real censorship levels may be higher than observed.

“China showed minimal blocks in our scan (LinkedIn only), likely because the Great Firewall (GFW) operates at the DNS level, which residential proxies can bypass.” continues the report. “Censorship isn’t binary. Countries don’t simply block “the internet”. Instead, they make targeted choices on which website categories to restrict, revealing their political priorities.”

Overall, the study shows that internet censorship is complex and strategic. Governments choose what to block carefully, often focusing on information control and preventing users from bypassing restrictions. VPN blocking, in particular, stands out as a strong signal of broader censorship efforts.

“Residential proxies partially bypass some censorship methods (notably China’s GFW), so our scores may underestimate the actual restriction levels in countries that use DNS-based blocking.” concludes the report.”The Middle East (UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia) shows a consistent pattern of VPN and adult content blocking, with the UAE adding political content restrictions.”

About the author: Mantas Sasnauskas

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, internet censorship)

Iran is slowly emerging from the most severe communications blackout in its history and one of the longest in the world. Triggered as part of January’s government crackdown against citizen protests nationwide, the regime implemented an internet shutdown that transcends the standard definition of internet censorship. This was not merely blocking social media or foreign websites; it was a total communications shutdown.

Unlike previous Iranian internet shutdowns where Iran’s domestic intranet—the National Information Network (NIN)—remained functional to keep the banking and administrative sectors running, the 2026 blackout ...

The post Why Tehran’s Two-Tiered Internet Is So Dangerous appeared first on Security Boulevard.

Iran is slowly emerging from the most severe communications blackout in its history and one of the longest in the world. Triggered as part of January’s government crackdown against citizen protests nationwide, the regime implemented an internet shutdown that transcends the standard definition of internet censorship. This was not merely blocking social media or foreign websites; it was a total communications shutdown.

Unlike previous Iranian internet shutdowns where Iran’s domestic intranet—the National Information Network (NIN)—remained functional to keep the banking and administrative sectors running, the 2026 blackout disrupted local infrastructure as well. Mobile networks, text messaging services, and landlines were disabled—even Starlink was blocked. And when a few domestic services became available, the state surgically removed social features, such as comment sections on news sites and chat boxes in online marketplaces. The objective seems clear. The Iranian government aimed to atomize the population, preventing not just the flow of information out of the country but the coordination of any activity within it.

This escalation marks a strategic shift from the shutdown observed during the “12-Day War” with Israel in mid-2025. Then, the government primarily blocked particular types of traffic while leaving the underlying internet remaining available. The regime’s actions this year entailed a more brute-force approach to internet censorship, where both the physical and logical layers of connectivity were dismantled.

The ability to disconnect a population is a feature of modern authoritarian network design. When a government treats connectivity as a faucet it can turn off at will, it asserts that the right to speak, assemble, and access information is revocable. The human right to the internet is not just about bandwidth; it is about the right to exist within the modern public square. Iran’s actions deny its citizens this existence, reducing them to subjects who can be silenced—and authoritarian governments elsewhere are taking note.

The current blackout is not an isolated panic reaction but a stress test for a long-term strategy, say advocacy groups—a two-tiered or “class-based” internet known as Internet-e-Tabaqati. Iran’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace, the country’s highest internet policy body, has been laying the legal and technical groundwork for this since 2009.

In July 2025, the council passed a regulation formally institutionalizing a two-tiered hierarchy. Under this system, access to the global internet is no longer a default for citizens, but instead a privilege granted based on loyalty and professional necessity. The implementation includes such things as “white SIM cards“: special mobile lines issued to government officials, security forces, and approved journalists that bypass the state’s filtering apparatus entirely.

While ordinary Iranians are forced to navigate a maze of unstable VPNs and blocked ports, holders of white SIMs enjoy unrestricted access to Instagram, Telegram, and WhatsApp. This tiered access is further enforced through whitelisting at the data center level, creating a digital apartheid where connectivity is a reward for compliance. The regime’s goal is to make the cost of a general shutdown manageable by ensuring that the state and its loyalists remain connected while plunging the public into darkness. (In the latest shutdown, for instance, white SIM holders regained connectivity earlier than the general population.)

The technical architecture of Iran’s shutdown reveals its primary purpose: social control through isolation. Over the years, the regime has learned that simple censorship—blocking specific URLs—is insufficient against a tech-savvy population armed with circumvention tools. The answer instead has been to build a “sovereign” network structure that allows for granular control.

By disabling local communication channels, the state prevents the “swarm” dynamics of modern unrest, where small protests coalesce into large movements through real-time coordination. In this way, the shutdown breaks the psychological momentum of the protests. The blocking of chat functions in nonpolitical apps (like ridesharing or shopping platforms) illustrates the regime’s paranoia: Any channel that allows two people to exchange text is seen as a threat.

The United Nations and various international bodies have increasingly recognized internet access as an enabler of other fundamental human rights. In the context of Iran, the internet is the only independent witness to history. By severing it, the regime creates a zone of impunity where atrocities can be committed without immediate consequence.

Iran’s digital repression model is distinct from, and in some ways more dangerous than, China’s “Great Firewall.” China built its digital ecosystem from the ground up with sovereignty in mind, creating domestic alternatives like WeChat and Weibo that it fully controls. Iran, by contrast, is building its controls on top of the standard global internet infrastructure.

Unlike China’s censorship regime, Iran’s overlay model is highly exportable. It demonstrates to other authoritarian regimes that they can still achieve high levels of control by retrofitting their existing networks. We are already seeing signs of “authoritarian learning,” where techniques tested in Tehran are being studied by regimes in unstable democracies and dictatorships alike. The most recent shutdown in Afghanistan, for example, was more sophisticated than previous ones. If Iran succeeds in normalizing tiered access to the internet, we can expect to see similar white SIM policies and tiered access models proliferate globally.

The international community must move beyond condemnation and treat connectivity as a humanitarian imperative. A coalition of civil society organizations has already launched a campaign calling for “direct-to-cell” (D2C) satellite connectivity. Unlike traditional satellite internet, which requires conspicuous and expensive dishes such as Starlink terminals, D2C technology connects directly to standard smartphones and is much more resilient to infrastructure shutdowns. The technology works; all it requires is implementation.

This is a technological measure, but it has a strong policy component as well. Regulators should require satellite providers to include humanitarian access protocols in their licensing, ensuring that services can be activated for civilians in designated crisis zones. Governments, particularly the United States, should ensure that technology sanctions do not inadvertently block the hardware and software needed to circumvent censorship. General licenses should be expanded to cover satellite connectivity explicitly. And funding should be directed toward technologies that are harder to whitelist or block, such as mesh networks and D2C solutions that bypass the choke points of state-controlled ISPs.

Deliberate internet shutdowns are commonplace throughout the world. The 2026 shutdown in Iran is a glimpse into a fractured internet. If we are to end countries’ ability to limit access to the rest of the world for their populations, we need to build resolute architectures. They don’t solve the problem, but they do give people in repressive countries a fighting chance.

This essay originally appeared in Foreign Policy.