[ELI5] Technologically what does it mean to “ban” websites?

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my country has banned a bunch of adult websites and tiktok but everything can accessed with cloudflare “WARP” feature. At office, I had always used cloudflare as my default DNS and so was completely unaffected. since i am not using a Vee.Pee.N, my ISP can clearly see i am visiting tiktok or the banned adult websites, can’t they? why aren’t they blocking my connection? ISP’s were even warned to follow the mandate properly otherwise they would be punished severely so they are clearly following the government ban.

related question: cloudflare unblocks everything at work network but need WARP enabled in my home network when using on and android. why is that?

In: Technology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

No, your ISP cannot clearly see you are visiting tiktok.com. The HTTPS protocol you use to access tiktok.com allows to host unlimited number of unrelated websites at the same IP address and it also hides the content of your connection. For example in the western US when I visit tiktok.com my browser is directed to contact 23.66.3.141 IP address (a2047.api10.akamai.net) to get the website content. But akamai.net is the major content distribution network that hosts millions of websites. If my ISP would block all connections to 23.66.3.141 IP address it would block many other websites. It cannot easily inspect what website my browser is requesting from 23.66.3.141 IP because all content packets are encrypted.

There is no easy and reliable way to block a website.

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