Restricting Internet access; activating "child lock" for Google and Bing users in the country

Official media in the country reported a disruption in the settings of Google and Bing, two widely used search engines. According to these reports, as of this morning, the settings of these two search engines for users of some operators have been set to “child” user mode. In this mode, which is designed for children, users face restrictions on Internet access.

According to HRANA News Agency, citing Enteb, in the early hours of this morning, the search settings of Google and Bing, two of the most widely used global search engines, were set to "child" user mode for users of some operators, including Amhar Awal and Irancell.

The report states that, based on follow-up with the operators, it appears that the changes in search did not come from these companies but from higher levels. Internet experts also believe that currently, this incident, which is happening from within the country, is as if all the country's Internet users are "children."

IT activist Milad Nouri tweeted about the restrictions on Google searches on mobile operators. It seems that these restrictions have been increasing and decreasing for some operators so far, but they are still ongoing.

Search engines have a feature called Safe Search to prevent users from accessing inappropriate content. Enabling this feature on the network is provided by Google and network subscribers cannot disable it.

Network and security expert Hossein Darvari confirms that the control of these actions probably came from higher levels of the internet service providers. He says that contrary to the assumption of some users who imagined this action in coordination with Google, what is happening is from inside Iran and is a kind of DNS Hijacking: "Now instead of you getting an IP like 10.10.34.35, you get an IP from a manipulated system that is intended by Google and Bing for schools and children."

He says: “It is certain that this is done within the country itself. There is a difference in response time and also the location and path of receiving the response can indicate intentional changes within the network. This amount of difference in the time of receiving information is significant. These requests are received in different networks and different provinces with similar results. The issue that has occurred now does not pose a security problem for users, but the problem is that users have lost the ability to change the Safesearch mode in search engines and in other words, the entire country has been considered a child on the Internet.”

Darvari emphasizes that the next problem that can arise is that a lot of traffic is directed to a specific IP, and due to these many restrictions, the quality of Internet service can again decrease noticeably.

It is worth noting that Digiato's follow-up with the Ministry of Communications for more information has so far been fruitless. This is despite the fact that the Minister of Communications recently appeared on the "Jahanara" television program and mentioned Google's SafeSearch feature and spoke about the need to provide a safe Internet for children and adolescents. This issue, according to the ministry, will be implemented in the next 2 weeks, and children and adolescents will only have access to websites that are on the Ministry of Islamic Guidance's white list when using the Internet.

It should be noted that over the past few months, cyberspace users have repeatedly complained about problems using the Internet and social networks.

Source: HRANA