Report: Access to Google and Gmail was blocked in Iran on Sunday evening - @YourMiddleEast

Iranians blocked from using Google
An Iranian woman surfs the internet at a cyber cafe in Tehran in January. ? Atta Kenare - AFP

Access to Google and Gmail was blocked in Iran on Sunday evening, Your Middle East's Tehran correspondent reports.

Abdolsamad Khoram Abadi, who is in charge of controlling Iranians' access to the Internet, confirmed the report for Iran Labour News Agency earlier today, saying the measure was taken due to frequent appeals made by the people.

He said it was a response to an anti-Islam movie, mocking the prophet Mohammed, which was uploaded on YouTube recently and provoked anger throughout the Muslim world. Mr. Khoram Abadi said the Google website would be filtered until further notice.

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians currently use social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter with the help of special software, which is seen as an offense to the country's domestic Islamic rules. Iranian authorities have previously announced plans to introduce a National Internet; essentially a form of internal Internet that would limit ordinary Iranians to a network that only allows access to "halal" online content.

Some countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh have previously blocked access to YouTube as the video-sharing website failed to take down the film.

Source: http://www.yourmiddleeast.com/news/iranians-can-no-longer-access-google-and-gmail_9739

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