Ahead of its Communist Party meeting next month the Chinese Government has blocked Whatspp in mainland China with text messaging as well as photo and video sharing not currently functional.
It is reported that users have faced problems with the app for more than a week with services dropping in and out. While at times, it has been completely blocked and only accessible via virtual private networks (VPNs) which circumvent China’s internet firewall.
According to Nadim Kobeissi, an applied cryptographer at Symbolic Software, a Paris-based research firm that also monitors digital censorship in China networks (VPNs), “Essentially, it seems that what we initially monitored as censorship of WhatsApp’s photo, video and voice note sharing capabilities in July has now evolved to what appears to be consistent text messaging blocking and throttling across China,
Kobeissi found that China may have recently upgraded its firewall to detect and block the NoiseSocket protocol that WhatsApp uses to send texts, in addition to already blocking the HTTPS/TLS that WhatsApp uses to send photos and videos. He said, “I think it took time for the Chinese firewall to adapt to this new protocol so that it could also target text messages.” His company noticed the app disruptions beginning last Wednesday.
WhatsApp is Facebook’s only product allowed to operate in mainland China. Facebook’s main social media service and its Instagram image sharing app are not available on the mainland.
It is believed that WhatsApp may have been targeted because of its strong encryption features lacked by services like Skype and Apple’s FaceTime that are allowed to operate in China.
There are concerns that encrypted messaging could be used by political dissidents organizing against the government.
If the ban is lifted, it could serve as a show of power by the Chinese government, and might dissuade users seeking to rely on an encrypted messaging service in the country. But if the ban is left in place, it could disrupt businesses that rely on WhatsApp to communicate with customers. It would also be a big step back for parent company Facebook’s relations with China.
While it is still not clear whether the ban will be lifted as many analyst fear it won’t, WhatsApp on its part has declined to comment on the latest clampdown.
According to BBC China Correspondent, Stephen McDonell, “Taking out WhatsApp has no impact on most Chinese people. They don’t use it. The unrivaled king of cyberspace in this country is WeChat.
You would really struggle to find somebody here not using WeChat to send messages, share photos, swap locations, flirt, read news and pay for pretty much everything. This all-encompassing app at the centre of people’s lives is available for the Communist Party to spy on the entire population.
WhatsApp is not – at least not to the same extent.”
For the records, WeChat which has already 963 million active users, stands to benefit from one of its last foreign competitors being pushed out of the market.
“China has shown little tolerance to encryption especially on platforms that can be used to share materials or potential propaganda,” Bill Taylor-Mountford, Asia Pacific vice president for LogRhythm told the BBC.
The latest disruption to WhatsApp appears to be part of a broader crackdown on the internet and online content in China.
On Monday, China’s cyber watchdog handed down maximum penalties to some of the country’s top technology firms including Tencent, Baidu and Weibo for failing to properly censor online content.
The penalties were imposed for failing to remove fake news and pornography, as well as content that authorities said “incites ethic tension” and “threatens social order”
