DNS censorship is a form of sensorship where DNS servers are (mis)configured to give the wrong answer to given domains. You want to go to a website, the name (www.something.tld) is translated by your ISP’s DNS servers into a IP, and your browser goes to that IP. But DNS servers do not need to tell you the correct IP for the website you are asking for, and some ISPs in tyrannic regimes such as Norway intentionally misconfigure their DNS-servers in order to censor the Internet.
A close examination at various ISPs reveal that Norwegian ISPs:
- Telenor and
- NextGenTel
..are doing DNS censorship. These ISPs will give you the wrong IP for many websites and take the user to a page which basically says “You can’t have this page, and you’re a bad person for wanting to view it”.
These Norwegian Internet providers does not censor their customers DNS queries on behalf of the tyrannical Norwegian government:
- Ventelo (Bluecom)
- Halden Dataservice
- Powertech
- BKK Bredbånd
- Monet
- UiO
Source: DNS censorship
Thus; Norwegian Telenor and NextGenTel are very alone in doing this kind of censorship. It’s interesting to note that many within the Norwegian government are pushing agressively to force all ISPs to do thing kind of censorship.
One minor detail: You don’t have to use your ISPs DNS servers. It is very easy to configure your computer to use DNS servers located abroad – or other local DNS servers – if your ISP’s DNS servers are misconfigured to to this kind of censorship. It’s also possible to use the network security tool Tor to by-pass your ISP’s DNS servers.
