Why Was WhatsApp was Blocked in China?

WhatsApp, the instant messaging service has been blocked in China. A global observation network for detecting surveillance, censorship and traffic manipulation, Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI,) suggested the ban. The OONI asked the Chinese internet service providers to block access to WhatsApp.

Slowly internet services started to block the messaging service as early as 19th September. Over the past few weeks, a number of people were faced with disruptions of WhatsApp in China.

WhatsApp that is owned by Facebook has not made an official announcement about the ban in China. This is not the first internet company blocked by China, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google are inaccessible to the population in China. Many citizens use virtual private networks (VPN) or tools to hide the internet traffic to circumvent censorship. This year, the Chinese government has launched a probe to crackdown the VPNs.

Senior International Defence Research Analyst at RAND Corporation, Timothy Heath reported that China is not happy that WhatsApp has strong encryption, “The government wants to monitor internet communications, and therefore it’s trying to steer its people to use technology that can be accessed and monitored by the government.”

Earlier this month, WeChat, a widely used chat service in China announced to the users that its policies include delivering required information to the government as when asked.