Iran is now in the midst of a broader digital crackdown that recently saw it target female users of Instagram. While the Asian nation is known for its Great Firewall and strong-arm approach to those who criticize the ruling government, China isn’t the strictest country in the world when it comes regulating online activities – that title is held by North Korea.
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It said the decision was taken on Saturday at a session of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, a committee on the use of cyberspace headed by the mullahs’ President Hassan Rouhani that serves as the regime’s IT regulator.
The applications have been clearly mentioned that if they fail to transfer the data and activity belonging to Iranian citizens within the country, then their activity inside the country could be stopped.
Ban is already in place against Facebook and Twitter, although many users of those two platforms still find access through various software, reports Reuters.
In April, Mahmoud Vaezi, the country’s minister of communications told a local news agency that Telegram had promised to close down pornographic channels within 24 hours of receiving a request from the the Iran government. One of the reasons why a lot of users in that country have come to trust Telegram is its cloud-based instant messaging service, which provides top level security for its users.
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Reuters points out that Telegram has roughly 20 million users in Iran, but that doesn’t mean it gets a free pass in the country. It remains to be seen whether companies will be willing to make such efforts or the apps will simply become off-limits for Iranian citizens. Back in November, for instance, authorities arrested the administrators of more than 20 Telegram groups for distributing “immoral content”. The apps may conclude that they’ll lose a lot of users by moving data onto Iranian servers, so requiring people to jump through some extra hoops to access a blocked service may be the better option.
