A few months ago government cyber agencies of China started to block sharing of videos, images and other documents files on WhatsApp. But Txt messages were continued to send. Until this restriction was lifted recently. The new york times report claims the messaging service is now blocked in the most city of China
Whatsapp is the last service by Facebook that available in China. Facebook was banned in the year 2009. The image sharing app Instagram is also unavailable when they find out that Facebook acquired Instagram.
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The exact reason is not known for the blocking of WhatsApp. it could be due to the strong end-to-end encryption that protects WhatsApp messages from being decoded or snooped upon.
Apart from google, facebook, and now WhatsApp, Twitter has also been blocked in China.
In fact, under the country’s policy of Internet censorship, search engine Google and all of its products like the Maps, YouTube and Gmail are permanently blocked.”I can live without the others [websites], but blocking WhatsApp is driving me crazy,” wrote a user on China’s social media website Weibo. People took to Weibo to express how blocking WhatsApp would be a loss. Many said it would affect their business.
China is clamping more of such Internet services that store user data outside of the country. New rules have been enforced which command the tech companies to keep only specific data and to be kept inside the country.
It is being said that some people might still be able to use WhatsApp but it’s working at a snail’s pace, which forced users to switch to other messaging services like WeChat. This has been the authorities’ way of censoring apps, particularly ones it cannot monitor.
WeChat being the alternate to WhatsApp or the Facebook messenger already finds its largest user base in the country. It crossed 600 million subscribers. A recent report from Android Authority claims that WeChat is sharing user data with the Chinese authorities, which includes names, contacts, email addresses, or even a user’s your exact location.
