Psiphon’s First Time Sponsoring the Toronto Chinatown Festival

On August 20th and 21st, Psiphon joined the 16th annual Toronto Chinatown Festival for the first time as one of the event sponsors.

In this 2 day event, Psiphon raised public awareness on Internet content access by reaching out to over 200,000 participants and educating more than 200 visitors on Psiphon’s software. Psiphon has also given out 10 visitors a free month of Psiphon Pro and custom made festival giveaways to booth visitors during the event.

As an important neighborhood in the downtown core, Chinatown BIA hosts the Toronto Chinatown Festival every year aiming to bring upon pan-Asian community in the city to celebrate its rich cultural heritage.

Click here to check out more about Psiphon's initiatives in arts and cultural events.

Want to invite Psiphon to your next event? Email us at info@psiphon.ca

Stay in touch with us via Twitter and Facebook for ongoing updates!

Social Media and Internet Ban in Turkey

Following the detainment of 12 pro-Kurdish lawmakers from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in the early hours of November 4 th , Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp and Skype were blocked in Turkey . There were reports that Turk Telekom internet provider completely disabled access to the internet or throttled the connection to the point that it was impossible to connect. Despite lack of official decision about the restrictions, and BTK’s explanation that there was a technical problem throughout Turkey, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim made a statement later in the day and said “For security reasons, these kinds of measures can be taken time to time. These are temporary measures. Everything goes back to normal after the danger is eliminated.” Social media and internet bans ended the following evening in most of the country, but there were still some short-term connection problems during the weekend in some regions, and it was reported that some Turk Telekom users

Psiphon Usage Surges as Brazil Blocks WhatsApp

At 9PM ET on December 16th WhatsApp was blocked in Brazil . The ban came after a judge ordered that the messenger app be blocked for 48 hours when the company refused to hand over private user information related to a criminal case. For months, Brazilian telecommunications companies have been attempting to shut down WhatsApp because it provides free messaging and voice services. WhatsApp is the most popular messenger service in Brazil and telecoms blame it for luring millions away from paid cell phone use. Internet users in Brazil reacted strongly to the ban, criticizing the decision to block WhatsApp widely on social media. Millions turned to alternate messenger services and shared circumvention techniques over social media. Psiphon was praised by people in Brazil for being free, open source, and able to keep them connected throughout the blocking event. Psiphon’s surge capacity was able to cope with the increased demand, with peak data use of more than 8x that of a normal day. Psip

Amid major network disruptions, 1.76M Psiphon users in Belarus

The Psiphon network supported a peak 1.76 million daily active users during significant network interference that started August 9th, a figure that represents nearly 1 in every 3 internet users. A large-scale disruption to international internet access was observed in Belarus, beginning during the contested presidential election on August 9th. Widespread filtering was reported across all Belarusian networks, affecting popular messaging apps including Telegram, Viber, and WhatsApp; social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube; major app markets including Google Play and the App Store; email providers Gmail, Mail.ru, and Yandex; maps, banking, online media, and many other services. Rolling blackouts of the mobile networks also occurred nightly between 6PM and 6AM. The majority of VPNs were reportedly blocked as a result of generalized SSL/TLS filtering. Tor direct connections were disrupted by the increased network change, while Tor bridge users reached a peak 8,0

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