Yahoo Groups blocked in India

Lately, I haven't been able to access the Yahoo Groups (groups.yahoo.com) from back here in India. There are tons of .NET-related groups which I browse once in a while to respond to queries, get answers to my own questions and share custom code snippets. Unfortunately, following an order by the Government of India, Indian ISP's have blocked access to Yahoo Groups due to some political and anti-national content. However, I figured out a quick “hack” to still access Yahoo Groups by accessing any one of the localized gateways like groups.yahoo.co.uk or groups.yahoo.com.au.

I still haven't understood the need to ban the entire groups community just because of some violating elements. Instead of censoring the whole thing it would have been more sensible to appoint a task force and restrict those few violating elements. What's next - barring Internet!

Published Thursday, October 02, 2003 4:00 PM by ashben
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Comments

Thursday, October 02, 2003 6:36 AM by Vazz

# re: Yahoo Groups blocked in India

I think Yahoo did not cooperate with Indian government in blocking just the offending groups. And the ISPs do not have the technology or the patience to block the particular site alone. :(
Thursday, October 02, 2003 6:45 AM by Ashutosh Nilkanth

# re: Yahoo Groups blocked in India

<Vazz> "And the ISPs do not have the technology or the patience to block the particular site alone"

If the ISP's can block a single site as groups.yahoo.com, I think they can as well block groups.yahoo.com/the_violating_group(s). Just a simple web server configuration from what I can tell. It's not rocket science.

I feel the key concern is - why should the entire community suffer the consequences of a handfull of offenders. I hope you'll agree with that.
Thursday, October 02, 2003 9:18 AM by Anonymous

# re: Yahoo Groups blocked in India

Ashutosh,
I totally agree. In Syria, they blocked hotmail.com, why? no idea. Yahoo! network is blocked entirely. Why? Because their Ads appeared in a football match that Israel team was playing on it!! STUPID enough to be humans!
Fortunately, I am not living there!
Thursday, October 02, 2003 10:23 AM by Manoj

# re: Yahoo Groups blocked in India

You can try http://www.anonymizer.com, Type in www.groups.yahoo.com and you are good to go...
Friday, October 24, 2003 3:28 PM by Sujeet M

# re: Yahoo Groups blocked in India

Everyone's been talking about using anonymizer.com to access yahoo groups.But they chuck you out the minute you try to login.So "access" is restricted to the front page of the site or the individual group.So if the owner/moderator has kept his messages viewable to members only (as most do),you're as good as out.

Unfortunately i have LAN access so proxy servers don't work for me.And i''m not that desperate so as to pay anonymizer.com.Anyone else have any ideas ?

BTW in.groups.yahoo.com works.So unless the groups was formed on the US server (as most are),you're good to go.But logging in from the indian site and trying to access the US site group also doesn't work
Tuesday, October 28, 2003 8:02 AM by vikram

# re: Yahoo Groups blocked in India

Anonymizer does not work. I dont think guardster.com works either but in.groups.yahoo.com works well... as mentioned by sujeet.
Saturday, November 08, 2003 9:20 AM by Ashutosh Nilkanth

# re: Yahoo Groups blocked in India

Seems like Yahoo Groups are finally accessible again from India, after a gap of around two months.
Friday, February 20, 2004 6:04 AM by Ravi Mehta

# re: Yahoo Groups blocked in India

What the toooooooooooooont is going on man
Tuesday, June 29, 2004 12:03 AM by Mac Indian

# re: Yahoo Groups blocked in India

Looks like the groups have been blocked again. They were working till a few days back.

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