Domain blocking around the world: who blocks what, and how
There is no "internet". There are about two hundred of them, overlapping, with different rules about which domains get to exist inside each one. If your business crosses borders, the regulators, the blocking techniques, and the intensity of enforcement all change as you move. This is an operator's view of the main markets — who decides, how they enforce, and what tends to break first.
Russia — Roskomnadzor and the TSPU
Russia runs one of the most comprehensive domain-blocking apparatuses anywhere. The regulator (Roskomnadzor) maintains a central list, and ISPs are legally required to enforce it — not with their own equipment, but with TSPU boxes installed at the ISP level since around 2019.
The essentials
- Regulator: Roskomnadzor
- Equipment: TSPU DPI boxes at ISP level, centrally controlled
- Methods: DNS poisoning, IP blocking, DPI/SNI filtering, SSL certificate inspection, URL filtering — more or less everything in the toolbox
- Targets: Unlicensed gambling, VPN services, media, political content, finance, adult
- List size: Hundreds of thousands of entries, updated several times a day
- Update mechanism: Real-time — the TSPU system pushes updates automatically
The reason TSPU is so hard to route around is that it operates at DPI level rather than just DNS. Switching resolvers doesn't help, and in many cases neither does HTTPS on its own — the system inspects SNI fields and SSL certificate metadata. Compliance across ISPs is consistent because Roskomnadzor effectively owns the equipment.
Turkey — BTK and RTUK
Turkey's filtering infrastructure is run by BTK (telecoms regulator) and RTUK (broadcasting, which somehow also ended up regulating parts of the internet). Decisions move fast — court orders or administrative rulings typically land on ISPs' desks with an enforcement deadline measured in hours.
How they block
- DNS poisoning (the workhorse)
- IP address blocks
- HTTP URL filtering
- HTTPS SNI inspection
- Transparent DNS proxying on port 53
What gets targeted
- Unlicensed gambling and betting (effectively all of it)
- Adult content
- VPN and proxy services
- Social media, periodically
- News and political content
Turkey is worth a special mention because of its transparent DNS proxy setup. Even if a user manually sets their DNS to Google or Cloudflare, the ISP intercepts port 53 traffic at the edge and answers on their behalf. The "just change your DNS" advice that works in a lot of countries does not work here.
Italy — ADM and AGCOM
Italian blocking is mostly about two things: unlicensed gambling (handled by ADM) and copyright infringement (handled by AGCOM). In practice, most of what our users see is the gambling list; AGCOM matters more for IPTV and piracy discussions.
The essentials
- Gambling regulator: ADM (Agenzia delle Dogane e dei Monopoli)
- Copyright regulator: AGCOM
- Blocking method: Primarily DNS via the major ISPs
- Targets: Unlicensed gambling first, copyright/IPTV piracy second
- Update cadence: ADM updates the gambling list regularly; AGCOM issues individual blocking orders
- Piracy Shield: Since 2024, Italy has had a platform designed to push IPTV blocks through in under half an hour from report to enforcement
ISP compliance in Italy is genuinely uneven. Some ISPs implement new entries within hours, others take days. Whether you see DNS or IP blocking depends on which carrier the user is on, which is why per-ISP monitoring matters more here than in countries with central equipment.
Spain & Germany — DGOJ and GGL
Two mature European gambling markets, both focused almost entirely on unlicensed gambling, with different enforcement styles.
Spain — DGOJ
The DGOJ publishes a list of unauthorized gambling domains and orders ISPs to DNS-block them. Enforcement has tightened since 2020, with steady additions to the list. The method is almost entirely DNS-based, so from a detection standpoint it's one of the cleaner markets to monitor.
Germany — GGL
Germany's GGL has been the national gambling regulator since 2021 and can order both DNS blocks at ISPs and payment blocks at banks and processors. The payment side is unusual and can be more painful than the domain block, depending on your setup.
Brazil — LOTERJ and SPA-MF
Brazil is the newest big story. Online betting got a federal licensing framework starting in 2023, and enforcement against unlicensed operators started ramping up in earnest late 2024. The landscape is still evolving, and there are overlapping federal and state authorities that don't always march in step.
The essentials
- Federal: SPA-MF (Secretaria de Premios e Apostas, under the Ministry of Finance)
- State (Rio de Janeiro): LOTERJ — issues blocking orders against operators not licensed in RJ
- Method: DNS blocking via court / administrative orders to ISPs
- Targets: Unlicensed online betting
- Practical note: The list is still small compared to Russia or Italy but is growing fast — and enforcement timing is unpredictable
If you're targeting Brazil, the usual pattern of "check weekly, update monthly" isn't going to cut it. Things change on a regulatory whim, and the blocks can arrive before the public announcement does.
CIS and parts of Asia
Technical sophistication varies a lot here. Some countries have Russian-style centralized DPI; others are still doing simple DNS blocking with uneven ISP compliance. A summary of the ones that come up most:
| Country | Main method | Common targets | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kazakhstan | DPI, DNS, SSL cert inspection | Gambling, media, VPN | Tried to push a national root CA in 2019 — browsers refused |
| Ukraine | DNS | Russian services, gambling | List is mostly Russian platforms these days |
| Uzbekistan | DNS, IP blocking | Gambling, political, adult | Enforcement has stepped up noticeably |
| India | DNS, URL filtering | Betting, adult, political | State-level variation is real — results differ by circle |
| Indonesia | DNS, DPI | Gambling, adult, political | Filtering happens centrally via national DNS |
| Vietnam | DNS, IP blocking | Gambling, political | ISPs enforce a centrally-provided list |
Kazakhstan's 2019 root CA attempt is worth flagging. The plan was to MITM all HTTPS traffic by convincing users to install a state-issued root certificate — and Mozilla, Google and Apple all blocked it pretty quickly. The country has since pivoted to the same passive certificate inspection that Russia uses.
Monitoring when the rules change per country
There is no single "check" that works everywhere. The detection logic has to be country-aware — what looks like a block in Russia is not what a block looks like in Italy, and if you use Russian logic to check Italian traffic you'll both miss real blocks and generate false alarms.
Our setup runs from real residential ISP connections in 50+ countries. The per-country detection rules know which IPs correspond to block pages, which response body patterns match regulator warnings, which TLS behaviors indicate SNI filtering or cert blocking, and so on. You add a domain once; we figure out what a failure looks like in each market.