China totally blocks WhatsApp

San Francisco/Beijing, Sept 26

After blocking videos, voice chats and images on WhatsApp, China has now blocked texting on the Facebook-owned popular mobile messaging service — sending out a stern message to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has been trying his best to re-enter the country.

A CNN report said the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), a global observation network for detecting censorship, surveillance and traffic manipulation, suggested that Chinese Internet service providers started blocking access to WhatsApp. Public reports on Twitter indicated that WhatsApp became inaccessible for some people on September 19. Over the last few months, there were a number of WhatsApp disruptions in China.

The move came ahead of a key Communist Party Congress on October 18 in which President Xi Jinping will begin his second five-year term as head of the ruling party. 

China has already blocked access to a number of Internet firms, including Facebook (since 2009), Instagram, Twitter and Google. 

Some people still access these services through virtual private networks (VPN) or with tools that disguise Internet traffic to circumvent censorship. But the Chinese government has launched a crackdown on VPNs this year. — IANS