Active Incident
Confirmed: dNS blocking in AE: bbc.com, facebook.com, google.com, instagram.com, medium.com +13 more
United Arab Emirates · February 4, 2026 · 4 days
CensoredPlanet Satellite detected DNS blocking for 18 domains
Evidence
100%
Anomaly Rate
36
Measurements
85%
Confidence
What This Means
100% of 36 network tests from United Arab Emirates failed to reach these services. Global baseline failure rate is typically 1-3%. This 97+ percentage point difference strongly indicates intentional blocking.
How We Detected This
Data Sourcecensoredplanet
ML ModelGradientBoosting v3.3 (LOCO median F1 0.87, honest across 127 countries)
Confidence Score85% certainty of censorship
Detection TimeFebruary 4, 2026
Corroborating Evidence (36)
Evidence collected from multiple independent sources. Upstream claims shown in quotes are not Voidly assertions.
Censored PlanetUniversity of Michigan research36 records
dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 14/14 probes anomalous (100.0%) for bbc.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
Feb 8, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 14/14 probes anomalous (100.0%) for facebook.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
Feb 8, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 14/14 probes anomalous (100.0%) for google.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
Feb 8, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 14/14 probes anomalous (100.0%) for instagram.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
Feb 8, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 14/14 probes anomalous (100.0%) for medium.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
Feb 8, 2026
View source →+ 31 more Censored Planet records
Affected Services (13)
BBCFacebookInstagramMediumNew York TimesSignalTelegramThe GuardianTikTokTwitter/XWhatsAppXYouTube
Blocked Domains (18)
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.
- Sub-national scope — measurement is aggregated at the country level; we cannot localize to a province, city, or network segment.
- Independent corroboration — this rests on a single source; treat it as a single-source signal, not a multi-source confirmation.
Cite This Incident
Voidly Research. (2026). Confirmed: dNS blocking in AE: bbc.com, facebook.com, google.com, instagram.com, medium.com +13 more [AE-2026-0001]. Voidly Global Censorship Index. https://voidly.ai/incident/AE-2026-0001
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