Indonesia cracks down on unlicensed online platforms and services

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NetBlocks metrics confirm that restriction of online platforms from Friday 29 July 2022. The incident comes as telecom regulator Kominfo starts implementing new licensing rules.

Impacted platforms cover widely used online payment services and gaming platforms including PayPal and Steam from Valve.

Indonesian human rights organisation SAFEnet states, “These new rules pose a huge privacy risk and have the potential for human rights violations.” Members of Indonesia’s eSports community and small business representatives also spoke out against the measures.

Real-time network data show the restriction coming into effect across Indonesia’s leading mobile and fixed-line internet providers. Some smaller operators remain unaffected at the time of writing. Work is ongoing to validate reports of restrictions under the new regulations.

Access to the services can be regained through the use of VPN services which can circumvent online censorship.

NetBlocks advocates for a free and open internet and advises against the use of network restrictions to impose regulatory frameworks.

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Methodology

Internet performance and service reachability are determined via NetBlocks web probe privacy-preserving analytics. Each measurement consists of latency round trip time, outage type and autonomous system number aggregated in real-time to assess service availability and latency in a given country. Network providers and locations are enumerated as vantage point pairs. The root cause of a service outage may be additionally corroborated by means of traffic analysis and manual testing as detailed in the report.

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