Active Incident
Confirmed: internet outage in United Arab Emirates
United Arab Emirates · May 3, 2026 · Ongoing
IODA detected significant connectivity drop in UAE. 5 critical alerts recorded. CenAlert confirms censorship activity.
Evidence
61%
Anomaly Rate
5
Measurements
70%
Confidence
What This Means
61% of 5 network tests from United Arab Emirates failed to reach these services. Global baseline failure rate is typically 1-3%. This 58+ percentage point difference strongly indicates intentional blocking.
How We Detected This
Data Sourceioda + censoredplanet
ML ModelGradientBoosting v3.3 (LOCO median F1 0.87, honest across 127 countries)
Confidence Score70% certainty of censorship
Detection TimeMay 3, 2026
Corroborating Evidence (30)
Evidence collected from multiple independent sources. Upstream claims shown in quotes are not Voidly assertions.
IODAInternet Outage Detection & Analysis5 records
outage
"IODA detected critical level outage for Dubay"— IODA report
Signal value: 0.60
May 3, 2026
View source →outage
"IODA detected critical level outage for Ajman"— IODA report
Signal value: 0.60
May 3, 2026
View source →outage
"IODA detected critical level outage for Umm Al Qaywayn"— IODA report
Signal value: 0.67
May 3, 2026
View source →outage
"IODA detected critical level outage for Fujayrah"— IODA report
Signal value: 0.59
May 3, 2026
View source →outage
"IODA detected critical level outage for Abu Dhabi"— IODA report
Signal value: 0.60
May 3, 2026
View source →Censored PlanetUniversity of Michigan research25 records
dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 9/9 probes anomalous (100.0%) for bbc.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
May 3, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 9/9 probes anomalous (100.0%) for chat.openai.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
May 3, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 9/9 probes anomalous (100.0%) for chatgpt.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
May 3, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 9/9 probes anomalous (100.0%) for claude.ai"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
May 3, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 9/9 probes anomalous (100.0%) for facebook.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
May 3, 2026
View source →+ 20 more Censored Planet records
Affected Services (20)
BBCChatGPTClaudeFacebookGeminiInstagramLanternMediumNew York TimesProton VPNProtonVPNPsiphonSignalTelegramThe GuardianTikTokTwitter/XWhatsAppXYouTube
Blocked Domains (25)
What we cannot say
- Who caused it — measurement data alone does not attribute this to any government, ISP, or other actor.
- Intent — anomalous or unreachable measurements indicate interference, not a stated motive or a deliberate-vs-incidental determination.
- Which networks — no specific ASN/ISP is identified for this incident.
- The mechanism — we cannot state whether this was DNS tampering, TLS/SNI reset, an HTTP blockpage, throttling, or an infrastructure outage.
- A confirmed duration — we report the observation window, not a verified start/stop of any block.
- Sub-national scope — measurement is aggregated at the country level; we cannot localize to a province, city, or network segment.
Cite This Incident
Voidly Research. (2026). Confirmed: internet outage in United Arab Emirates [AE-2026-0085]. Voidly Global Censorship Index. https://voidly.ai/incident/AE-2026-0085
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