UAE (United Arab Emirates) is located in the Persian Gulf, boarded by Oman and Saudi Arabia and shares sea borders with Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen, Qatar, Iran and Kuwait. A Islam country the UAE censors Internet access because they want o preserve their cultural and religious values.
The UAE is one of the most connected countries in the Middle East area. The State owns one licensed ISP : the Emirate and Internet Multimedia or EIM, also named ETISALAT, which provides telecom services, including dial-up modems, high-speed broadband Internet connections and telephone. All Internet connections pass through this provider making it easy to monitor and control Internet access.
Etisalat censors many websites with content they consider immoral or offensive to their religious, cultural or ethical values. Websites with criminal content, piracy programs, homosexuality, gambling, nudity, pornography, narcotics and other sensitive issues are blocked. All websites with Israel as a top level domain are also blocked.
Some social networking websites are also censored, like Youtube or Facebook because they might contain content deemed as “immoral” for young Arabs.
Even Wikipedia has an increasing number of restricted pages. Skype and other VoIP services are blocked too, making it expensive to call abroad, especially for expats.
However, most of Etisalat`s censorship efforts are oriented towards pornography. For many Islam families, the censorship is seen as a positive thing, considering that they do not want to expose their children to such content.
Despite popular belief, we are not all offended by the content UAE blocks. Maybe you are an expat living in the UAE and you want to be free to access any website you want (like Facebook) or make cheaper VoIP calls home. If this is your case then we have good news for you. You can get full Internet access in the UAE by using our premium VPN service. With SunVPN you will get access to all blocked websites, Skype and, even more, you will encrypt all your Internet traffic.
Take a look at our plans and prices and get your SunVPN account now!
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