Malaysia blocked Grindr

On 17th April 2024, OONI data shows that Malaysia started blocking access to Grindr — the world’s largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans, and queer people.

The following chart aggregates OONI measurement coverage from the OONI Probe testing of www.grindr.com on 13 networks in Malaysia between 1st January 2024 to 30th April 2024.

As is evident, the testing of www.grindr.com previously showed that the site was accessible in Malaysia, and only started presenting signs of blocking on 17th April 2024 (the measurement annotated as “confirmed blocked” on 16th April 2024 was collected at 18:49 UTC, which is 02:49 in Malaysia on 17th April 2024).

Based on OONI’s methodology, we are able to automatically confirm the blocking of websites based on fingerprints when a block page is served, or when DNS resolution returns an IP associated with censorship. In Malaysia’s case, ISPs generally implement DNS based censorship by returning the IP 175.139.142.25, which is included in OONI’s fingerprint database (enabling the automatic detection and confirmation of blocks).

OONI data shows that the blocking of Grindr is automatically confirmed because the IP 175.139.142.25 is returned as part of DNS resolution. However, it’s worth noting that we do not observe these blocks on all tested networks in Malaysia, nor do we see them implemented consistently over time. The networks where we observe the highest volume of measurements providing evidence of Grindr blocking (based on the IP 175.139.142.25 being returned as part of DNS resolution) are Telekom Malaysia (AS4788), DiGi Telecommunications (AS4818), and Time (AS9930). However, these networks received the most OONI Probe testing coverage during the analysis period, resulting in the highest volume of measurements being annotated as “confirmed blocked”. It’s worth highlighting though that OONI measurements from the testing of Grindr started to present evidence of blocking on around the same dates on multiple tested networks, suggesting that ISPs in Malaysia were instructed to start blocking access to Grindr in mid-April 2024.

Recent OONI data suggests that Grindr remains blocked in Malaysia.

If you are in Malaysia, you can contribute more measurements by running OONI Probe.

Our partner, Sinar Project, shared instructions for the testing of Grindr in Malaysia. Sinar Project also published a report documenting the blocking of Grindr in Malaysia based on OONI data.