Tehran, Iran – The Iranian government has switched to block Signal after Iranians flocked to the messaging platform over concerns over the privacy of WhatsApp, owned by Facebook.
As of Monday, Iranian users reported problems connecting to the open-source signal, which has been chosen by many as a more secure means of encrypted communication since a new privacy policy released by WhatsApp earlier this month gave more attention to the app’s data collection practices.
In a tweet, Signal said it has “been working on Iran’s censorship” since the app became the most downloaded content in Iranian app stores.
“Unable to stop the registration, the IR censors are now dropping all signal traffic,” the tweet said. Iranian people deserve privacy. We have not given up. “
On January 14, Signal was removed from Cafe Bazaar, the Iranian version of Google Play, and Myket, another well-known local app store.
“We thank you for understanding our limitations,” a message greeted Iranians who wanted to download Signal.
The app is tagged by a filtering committee tasked with identifying ‘criminal content’ headed by the country’s attorney general and includes representatives from the judiciary, communications ministry, law enforcement, parliament, among others and the Ministry of Education.
However, the judiciary tried to distance itself from the ban on Tuesday.
Spokesperson Gholamhossein Esmaeili said under new chief Ebrahim Raisi since 2019 that the judiciary has “not blocked any media, news channel or messaging service and not after blocking cyberspace and social messaging services”.
‘Protected from government agencies’
This is not the first time Signal has been targeted by Iranian authorities.
The app was previously blocked sporadically between 2016 and 2017, but the filtering largely flew under the radar as Signal didn’t have a significant user base in Iran at the time.
The messaging service was later quietly unblocked and no official reason was ever given by the authorities.
Signal was used by a number of Iranians during protests in late 2017 and early 2018 in an effort to maintain secure communications, said Mahsa Alimardani, an internet researcher with UK human rights organization ARTICLE19.
“Signal has always been advertised as the go-to application for dissidents or activists to stay safe from any state authority, especially the United States and its vast surveillance capabilities,” she told Al Jazeera.
“Prior to this migration by users dissatisfied with WhatsApp’s new privacy changes, Signal was already a daily resource of civil society and activities,” said Alimardani, a PhD student at the Oxford Internet Institute.
Signal joins a host of other top social media applications that have been blocked by Iranian authorities, including Telegram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
Telegram was filtered in May 2018, shortly after protests that broke out in dozens of cities across Iran over economic, political and social grievances.
WhatsApp and Instagram remain the only leading unblocked foreign social media platforms in Iran.
The fact that Signal was blocked but WhatsApp remains usable has led to speculation by Iranian users on social media that the Iranian government is somehow accessing users’ information on WhatsApp.
Alimardani said the same rumor about Telegram started circulating before it got blocked by the blockade.
“There is no factual basis for this rumor, as it is highly unlikely that Iranian authorities have the ability to challenge Facebook’s security capabilities, or that Facebook is partnering with Iran to share data,” she said.
Instead, she said, it is more likely that Iranian authorities will try to limit the number of unblocked apps before Signal gets too big in Iran.
Will the ban work?
With years of experience dealing with internet restrictions by Iranian authorities and those imposed by international companies due to sanctions, Iranians have become familiar with circumvention tools.
Many Iranians regularly use virtual private networks (VPNs) that mask the IP address of the users to access blocked content, including social media.
Despite being banned for nearly two years, Telegram is still used daily by tens of millions of Iranians. However, government agencies were legally prohibited from returning to messaging.
In this environment, Alimardani said the Signal ban is likely to slow the growth of its user base and keep people on WhatsApp at first.
“However, statistics from Telegram have shown that while usage declined right after censorship, it eventually stabilized,” she said. “But the ban slowed the expected growth before censorship.”
There is currently no data on how many people use Signal in Iran, but it is believed that its base is still much smaller than Telegram, which has been used in the country since its release in 2013.
There will be more restrictions?
The filtering of the signal has renewed fears of more possible restrictions on internet freedom in Iran.
Iran’s Ministry of Information and Communications has repeatedly tried to distance itself from social media blocking by saying it does not have the authority to make those decisions.
After authorities cut internet access across Iran for nearly a week during nationwide protests in November 2019, ICT minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi said it was not his decision.
The minister has so far said nothing about the filtering of Signal.
Last week, the judiciary filed suit against Azari Jahromi, but he released him on bail for refusing to block Instagram and otherwise restrict other social media.
The ministry said lawsuits from a group of 432 people from Ahwaz over the use of cyberspace in a September 2018 attack and 150 Kerman religious scholars on digital “corruption” were among other reasons for the minister’s subpoena.
Despite the decision-making, Internet security and digital rights researcher Amir Rashidi says the ministry is almost entirely responsible for the technical implementation of Internet blocking practices in Iran.
Rashidi explained that when an Iranian user wants to use the global internet, his command is first forwarded to his local internet service provider and then to the Telecommunication Infrastructure Company affiliated with the Ministry, which is the gateway.
“So Internet censorship can be implemented at either level,” he told Al Jazeera.
Rashidi, like Telegram, said Signal’s popularity was undermined by Iranian authorities.
“Traditionally, if the Iranian government can’t figure out what’s going on or who is doing what, they fear people might do something against the government,” he said.