Hello Oonitarians,

Sometimes what may look like DNS blocking may in fact be a case of DNS misconfiguration (which is not intentional censorship). Such cases were observed in Brazil with the help of Coding Rights, and through the analysis of OONI and RIPE network measurements.

Today, OONI's Leonid and Vasilis published a new report examining cases of DNS misconfiguration, which is available here: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/not-quite-network-censorship/

https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/934068462422577152

More specifically, this study draws upon the case of pernambuco.com, a Brazilian news outlet that has reportedly been inaccessible in many networks across Brazil. Following investigations, it was determined that this site was not blocked by means of DNS tampering but rather, inaccessible due to DNS misconfiguration. Similarly, many other international domains were found to be inaccessible for the same reason.

OONI's latest study explains how to detect such cases, and offers advice on possible solutions, to improve the accessibility of sites around the world!

Cheers,

Maria.