What’s blocked where, tested every day

• Blocked
• Blocked on some networks
• Turned away by the site (+)

• Blocked ✕
• Blocked on some networks ½
• Turned away by the site ⊘
• Unstable ~
• Opens
• Being double-checked …
• Not tested yet

Each country page lists its results in words, and each site’s page shows it in every country. Want a site we don’t track? Test any website now.

We earn a commission if you buy through these links. It never changes what the monitor shows. Our disclosure.

1. Test machines inside each country open the site

   Every day, machines on the networks of the two biggest home-internet providers in most countries, such as China Unicom and China Mobile or BT and Virgin Media, request each site’s homepage over a secure connection. Where a homepage sends everyone to another address, as Spotify’s does, we test that address.

2. Every failure is tried again

   About one test in fifteen fails by accident. A failure only counts when it happens twice on the same network, and only when the site opens from other countries.

3. A change needs re-checks on several machines, on two days

   When a country’s result changes, we test it again a few hours later on up to five machines from each provider, each tried twice, and again the next day. A provider counts as blocking only when most of its machines fail twice, and as open only when none does, so a machine that slips past a block, or one behind its owner’s ad-blocker, can’t flip a result. Where every other provider in the country blocks a site, a provider whose machines disagree counts as blocking too, and a machine caught getting around blocks more than once is set aside. A provider also counts as blocking when two of its machines get its own address-lookup block (the name doesn’t resolve, or a block page answers): machines that look names up elsewhere get past that kind of block.

• We test homepages over home broadband. Mobile networks, apps, calls and deliberate slowdowns can behave differently.
• Results show what the networks we test in each country do. Other providers there may block more, or less. In the UAE only Etisalat has a test machine.
• In Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia most test machines sit in data centers, so results there come from whichever machines are online. A data center that gets past a filter the other networks there apply doesn’t count against the block.
• A block that works only through a provider’s address lookup (DNS) can be missed or show late, because many test machines look names up elsewhere: it counts once two machines on that provider run into it.
• Some test machines sit behind a home ad-blocker or an office firewall. A firewall that re-signs a site’s certificate never counts as a block, and a private-address answer counts only in Iran, whose censors answer that way, or when a second machine there gives it too.
• The tests run on a public network of test machines, which keeps a public record of each test: the site and its result.
• The list is ours: big platforms, news sites, rights groups, VPN and privacy tools. We don’t test piracy or adult sites.