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Censorship Glossary

Canonical definitions for internet censorship terminology. These definitions are stable references used across our incident reports and methodology.

DNS Blocking

Manipulation of DNS responses to prevent domain resolution.

Easy to bypass

SNI Filtering

Blocking HTTPS connections by inspecting the Server Name Indication field.

Moderate to bypass

HTTP Blocking

Intercepting and blocking unencrypted HTTP requests based on content.

Easy to bypass

IP Blocking

Blocking all traffic to specific IP addresses regardless of protocol.

Hard to bypass

Throttling

Deliberately degrading connection speed to specific services.

Moderate to bypass

Network Shutdown

Complete or near-complete disconnection of internet access in a region.

Impossible to bypass

Platform Block

Blocking access to a specific online platform or service.

Moderate to bypass

Collateral Damage

Unintended blocking of legitimate services due to censorship techniques.

N/A

Deep Packet Inspection

Network equipment that examines packet contents beyond headers.

Hard to bypass

Want to dive deeper?

Read our full methodology or explore live censorship incidents detected by our ML classifier.

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