[liberationtech] Iranian are bypass the Twitter censorship and sanction by their mobile phones

[Nariman Gharib]

Hi John,

On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 8:41 PM, John Adams <jna at retina.net> wrote:

> This series of posts conflicts about three different problems. It's
> hard to tell what you're having an issue with: Government censorship,
> lack of SMS, or 2-factor in the places.
>
> From what I know:
>
> 1. If any censorship of Twitter is going on, it's Iran, and not
> Twitter that is censoring the communications. If the telcos are
> blocking messages from Twitter's SMS source, it's the telcos.
>
> 2. It's possible Twitter doesn't have a business relationship with any
> SMS carriers in the country, so that can break phone verification. You
> can still download the client on ios or android and use the code
> generation in the client to verify a device, if Twitter is reachable
> across the Internet from Iran.

​Google does? Facebook does? you can't activate your 2step verification via
app without adding your phone number in Twitter as far as I know.​


>
> 3. Who blocked this "Trick" of modifying the page with +98? The page
> is completely in SSL, so if that change isn't working anymore then
> most likely,  Twitter modified the page.
>

​Twitter did that.​


>
> 4. "I wonder if there's a way to get Twitter to remove the restriction
> for users based in Iran." --  This is a problem that the Iranian
> government needs to solve, not Twitter.
>
​Yes you are right. But 'I think' Twitter have a concern about activists
and high profile internet users in Iran, because the verification code
comes from a text message to the phone number, it's easy for the Government
or IRGC to find those Twitter accounts owners.

>
> It's easier to figure out how to fix these things when you're clear in
> the way that you express the problem.
>
​You are right and I'm sorry.​


>
> -j
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 9:44 AM, Griffin Boyce <griffin at cryptolab.net>
> wrote:
> >   I wonder if Twitter restricts accounts to one per phone number. Phone
> > verification is readily bypassed with something like twilio, but only the
> > *most* advanced users would be able to pull this off.  It would be worth
> > setting up an app to allow Iranian users to bypass it semi-automatically,
> > but spambots and abusers would *decimate* it.
> >
> >   I wonder if there's a way to get Twitter to remove the restriction for
> > users based in Iran. There's not really a good reason for it in the first
> > place =/
> >
> > ~Griffin
> >
> > Nariman Gharib wrote:
> >>
> >> no it doesn't. they blocked this 'trick' and also many Iranian users
> >> can't register to Twitter anymore because it require phone
> >> verification on sign-up page.
> >>
> >> On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 5:11 PM, Kate Krauss <katie at critpath.org>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Does this still work?
> >>>
> >>> Thanks,
> >>>
> >>> Katie
> >>>
> >>> On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 5:34 PM, Nariman Gharib
> >>> <nariman.gh at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Hi,
> >>>> Basically as you knew Iran is not on the country list of Twitter.
> >>>> I've reached to Twitter and they know about this issue.
> >>>>
> >>>> Iranians are gets very active on Twitter after 2009 Pres.Election
> >>>> till now and the numbers of the users all of the time are growing.
> >>>> It's sad we see Twitter hasn't Iran on the list while Google and
> >>>> other networks are supporting Iran's telephone numbers for give
> >>>> the users the option to enable the 2step verification.
> >>>>
> >>>> so today I wrote an article on my blog and teach iranians how they
> >>>> can active their twitter telephone number(SMS service and active
> >>>> their 2step verification) from inside iran.
> >>>> https://twitter.com/ListenToUs/status/497374522426015744 [1]
> >>>>
> >>>> how: actually when you are going to submit a number of twitter
> >>>> website, with Inspect element on chrome you can add +98 on the
> >>>> form and write your in the telephone number field and twitter will
> >>>> send you a text message and everything is going to successful.
> >>>>
> >>>> and many iranians are now have twitter verification on their
> >>>> phones and some of them like this man:
> >>>> https://twitter.com/ziarlarimi/status/497484191613726720 [2]
> >>>> texting from IRAN without using any circumvention tools.
> >>>>
> >>>> I hope twitter will decide to add Iran to the 'INTERFACE' of the
> >>>> website,because on the backend everything is fine.
> >>>>
> >>>> Thanks
> >>>> Nariman
> >
> >
> > --
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