Censorship may be unintentional

Some MobileMe users in Saudi Arabia are finding me.com blocked, reports say. Affected people are instead greeted with a splash screen in English and Arabic informing them that the government has restricted access. The issue is not universal however; some people may still be unrestricted, while others can gain access via https:// or by navigating to a specific page like me.com/mail.

It's speculated that the Saudi government is not trying to block MobileMe as a whole, but perhaps only a particular page that was flagged as insecure. The Saudi government has become notorious for imposing censorship on the Internet, nominally with the goal of fighting terrorism. At one point it threatened to block RIM's BlackBerry Messenger service in the country unless it could get access to normally encrypted data. Eventually RIM conceded to Saudi demands.

by MacNN Staff