English

A Bestiary of Blocking: The Motivations and Modes behind Website Unavailability

Networking and Internet Architecture 2018-06-04 v1

Abstract

This paper examines different reasons the websites may vary in their availability by location. Prior works on availability mostly focus on censorship by nation states. We look at three forms of server-side blocking: blocking visitors from the EU to avoid GDPR compliance, blocking based upon the visitor's country, and blocking due to security concerns. We argue that these and other forms of blocking warrant more research.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1806.00459,
  title  = {A Bestiary of Blocking: The Motivations and Modes behind Website Unavailability},
  author = {Sadia Afroz and Mobin Javed and Vern Paxson and Shoaib Asif Qazi and Shaarif Sajid and Michael Carl Tschantz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1806.00459},
  year   = {2018}
}