In an attempt to block a massage parlor, the Kazakhstan government blocked over 93,000 websites

To block the website of a massage parlor providing “illicit” massage services, the Kazakhstan government ended up taking down 93,000 websites, resulting in massive collateral damage to all the website owners.

For a long time now, several governments all over the world have been resorting to blocking when they come across illegal websites. Several of these website blocking attempts make use of a method in which a website is blocked by its IP address, an outdated practice that does more harm than good, as clearly demonstrated by the attempts of the Kazakh government.

To block an erotic massage parlor that goes by the name of “Rainbow Spa,” the Kazakh government blocked the website by its IP address, which ultimately resulted in blocking the domestic access to nearly 93,000 other websites that shared the same cloud infrastructure with the aforementioned massage parlor’s website.

The IP addresses 185.165.123.36 and 185.165.123.206 were the ones to get blocked in which the former IP address hosted over 9,500 domains whereas the latter hosted 84,000 domains.

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