Users in Iran call the Internet “Filternet” because of the strict censorship they have on Internet access. Millions of Iranians use VPN servers to access the outside world.
In October 2013, Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, asked the Iranian President: “Can the citizens of Iran read your tweets?” In response, the Iranian President said that he would work to make sure that Iranians have access to information globally and that internet censorship would be reduced.
Shortly after promising to support internet freedom, the Iranian government has banned yet another web application called – Cryptocat , a tool that allows for secure and encrypted chat.
The application is known for its ability to allow encrypted communication between users, popular with human rights activists and journalists around the world.
According to “ Blockediniran.com ,” the Cryptocat website and its relatively private chat service were inaccessible to users in Iran.
“ Currently, it appears that Cryptocat is the first and only encrypted chat app to be censored in Iran, ” Cryptocat said in a blog post
“At Cryptocat our main goal is to provide easy-to-use, affordable, private chat around the world. We will do everything we can to allow users in Iran to access Cryptocat, along with the rest of the world.”
But Iranian users are still using Cryptocat. The Cryptocat team provided the chat service over the Tor network, on a hidden deep web site 'catmeow2zuqpkpyw.onion', which can only be accessed using Tor software.
It is possible that the Cryptocat service was used by some political groups that the Iranian government considered its enemies. However, such encrypted applications are still operating and are not yet completely banned in Iran.
Cryptocat is available for Mac and has plugins for Chrome and Firefox.
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