Active Incident
Confirmed: internet outage in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia · May 3, 2026 · Ongoing
IODA detected significant connectivity drop in Saudi Arabia. 8 critical alerts recorded. CenAlert confirms censorship activity.
Evidence
60%
Anomaly Rate
8
Measurements
70%
Confidence
What This Means
60% of 8 network tests from Saudi Arabia failed to reach these services. Global baseline failure rate is typically 1-3%. This 57+ percentage point difference strongly indicates intentional blocking.
How We Detected This
Data Sourceioda + censoredplanet
ML ModelGradientBoosting v3.3 (LOCO median F1 0.87, honest across 127 countries)
Confidence Score70% certainty of censorship
Detection TimeMay 3, 2026
Corroborating Evidence (33)
Evidence collected from multiple independent sources. Upstream claims shown in quotes are not Voidly assertions.
IODAInternet Outage Detection & Analysis8 records
outage
"IODA detected critical level outage for Ar Riyad"— IODA report
Signal value: 0.60
May 3, 2026
View source →outage
"IODA detected critical level outage for Al Quassim"— IODA report
Signal value: 0.68
May 3, 2026
View source →outage
"IODA detected critical level outage for `Asir"— IODA report
Signal value: 0.53
May 3, 2026
View source →outage
"IODA detected critical level outage for Makkah"— IODA report
Signal value: 0.60
May 3, 2026
View source →outage
"IODA detected critical level outage for Tabuk"— IODA report
Signal value: 0.67
May 3, 2026
View source →+ 3 more IODA records
Censored PlanetUniversity of Michigan research25 records
dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 4/4 probes anomalous (100.0%) for bbc.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
May 3, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 4/4 probes anomalous (100.0%) for chat.openai.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
May 3, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 4/4 probes anomalous (100.0%) for chatgpt.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
May 3, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 4/4 probes anomalous (100.0%) for claude.ai"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
May 3, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 4/4 probes anomalous (100.0%) for facebook.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
May 3, 2026
View source →+ 20 more Censored Planet records
Affected Services (20)
BBCChatGPTClaudeFacebookGeminiInstagramLanternMediumNew York TimesProton VPNProtonVPNPsiphonSignalTelegramThe GuardianTikTokTwitter/XWhatsAppXYouTube
Blocked Domains (25)
What we cannot say
- Who caused it — measurement data alone does not attribute this to any government, ISP, or other actor.
- Intent — anomalous or unreachable measurements indicate interference, not a stated motive or a deliberate-vs-incidental determination.
- Which networks — no specific ASN/ISP is identified for this incident.
- The mechanism — we cannot state whether this was DNS tampering, TLS/SNI reset, an HTTP blockpage, throttling, or an infrastructure outage.
- A confirmed duration — we report the observation window, not a verified start/stop of any block.
- Sub-national scope — measurement is aggregated at the country level; we cannot localize to a province, city, or network segment.
Cite This Incident
Voidly Research. (2026). Confirmed: internet outage in Saudi Arabia [SA-2026-0054]. Voidly Global Censorship Index. https://voidly.ai/incident/SA-2026-0054
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