hello folks, I’ve been receiving a lot of ee-mails since a few days that you guys are not able to access my site at www.prateekagarwal.webs.com
I know this site has proved beneficial to you in some ways and I can say this with massive response I’ve got from your end. Thanks for making this website a grand success. Unfortunately, the site is not accessible from India from a few days. Since a lot of people on this list have to do something with this, I thought to write it publicly to let everyone know what’s the problem, and also to seek your help to revive. A number of users have reported issues accessing my site from India due to ISPs blocking access to Webs. The problem is not that my site is down! The problem is that your ISP (Internet Service Provider) has been ordered by the Indian government, to block one of the IP addresses of webs.com - that is, to block ALL their member sites that use the address: http://membersite.webs.com THIS is why you cannot see this site, but people in other countries can! We are told that the department responsible for the block is: DIT (Department of Information Technology). What we could found out, Please contact DIT. They must be the ones to lift the block. A member of Webs and my good friend has helped a great deal in contacting government authorities and finding out what was happening. Our phone calls and emails have gone unanswered, so I believe we all owe sarkarsweet a great big "thank you!" for his diligence. Accordingly, I have looked through the DIT website ( http://www.mit.gov.in/) and found the following useful info: Dr. Gulshan Rai, Director General, (e-mail: [email protected]) I-CERT (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team ) and GC(Cyber Laws Group Formulation & Enforcement Division), Department of Information Technology, Electronics Niketan, 6, CGO Complex, Lodhi Road, New Delhi – 110003 Telephone: +91-11-24368544 Fax: +91-11-24366806 Website Related: Webmaster Department of Information Technology & Web Information Manager, DIT-Website Ministry of Communications & Information Technology (Govt. of India) Electronics Niketan, 6, CGO Complex, Lodhi Road, New Delhi 110003 Tele: 011-24301851/862 Fax: 011-24364739 Email: [email protected] now, We need YOU to help us, by writing to this organization and requesting the block be lifted so you can access this site. The webs.com Customer support team is assiduously trying to reach the DIT and resolve the issue, but it could not be done as of now. Could you please try from your end to tell the government that webs.com is not a spammer and they should not block their IP address? Here is a letter that has been written by the director of customer support, Webs.com ToDIT: --- I am the Director of Customer Support for Webs.com, an international hosting provider for individuals, groups and organizations that are interested in building a website. We recently became aware of a large number of our customers in India that are not able to access their sites that are in a specific format ( http://xxxxxxxx.webs.com). Our research in speaking with both our customers and Internet Service Providers in India originally led us to believe that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has blocked IP address 216.52.115.50 (Webs.com), rendering all of our customer's sites in the above format inaccessible. We have since learned from one of our customers that the Department of Information Technology (DIT) is the entity that initiated the blockage. We have been advised by a customer of one of India’s ISPs (through information obtained from the ISP) that the offending site that caused your office to place a global block on all of our webs.com addresses is http://donotdial100.webs.com. I would like to confirm with you that Webs.com has frozen this site as of 08/11/2010. We have a very strict Terms of Service policy that states we freeze sites for any abuse or neglect for our Terms of Service. This is the reason we froze the aforementioned site. If this was the only offending site that caused your blockage in India, we have confirmed that it has been frozen. If there are additional offending sites, I ask that you forward those site addresses as soon as possible so that we can take the necessary action on those as well. It is my hope and expectation that as a result of receiving this confirmation, you will unblock all of our other users who are legitimate, allowing them to restore their normal course of business. Unfortunately it has been almost two weeks since this blockage occurred. We continue to have many unhappy customers in India who cannot access their legitimate sites as a result, and many unhappy Internet Service Providers who cannot do anything to help them. You can get a sense for the frustration of our customers there by going to our community topic at this location: http://support.webs.com/webs/topics/i.... I very much appreciate your willingness to work with us now and in the future. It is our hope that you will be able to assist us in some way to resolve this unfortunate experience and allow our customer's sites to be accessible again. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me directly. Thank you in advance for your assistance. --- Update: 23 August 2010 We have finally tracked this down to TRAI - the Telecom regulatory facility in India - having placed a block on Webs. We are working to contact them to identify the reason for the block, so we can get the block lifted. You might try emailing them as well: [email protected] we are also thinking to file an RTI application against this blockage. Perhaps, you guys too can help in that. I encourage all of you to fill one of these out as soon as possible so they cannot ignore the problem and the severity. Here is the URL for your convenience: http://www.rtiindia.org We continue to work diligently toward a solution and will keep you updated if and when we make any progress. Please take some moments from your busy schedule and do the needful to revive the site. The help from your end in this regard will be greatly appreciated. Please mail me your questions/comments/findings related to this at [email protected] Regards, Prateek agarwal. Skype: Prateek_agarwal32 Wanna see inside me? My blog is the telescope: http://www.myfriendprateek.blogspot.com website: http://www.prateekagarwal.webs.com the best way to accomplish your softwares/websites development needs. You tell, I'll build. Voice your thoughts in the blog to discuss the Rights of persons with disability bill at: http://www.accessindia.org.in/harish/blog.htm To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
