Kay Luo LinkedIn, Sr. Director of Corporate Communications told me that also the Linkedin Outlook add-on will stay blocked.

“ Regarding the download, we (are) complying with the US law, so it is blocked in Syria. For the same reason, Sudan is blocked from accessing our site.”

she wrote some more few stuff in another email and told me they are not for blogging!

You can find more information about US sanctions enforcement here.

I am not a legal expert but by looking at the law, it says nothing about blocking website access? Some US based Linkedin competitors like ecademy and Plaxo are still accessible in Sudan and the vast majority of US based websites, So the question is why Linkedin only blocks access?

I have emailed Lou the following questions:

So in this regard how did you make the block decisions and who does it inside Linkedin? A Linkedin lawyer told you so? Or it was wired by a US government official to Linkedin?

One might wonder whether Linkedin is making a political statement and discrimination against the people of Sudan (majority are Black Muslims) since they unblocked Syria and not Sudan?! Let’s wait and see what Linkedin will say. On the other hand I have contacted few US based lawyers to explain if the sanctions include websites and software downloads and I will update you soon.

Ashraf Mansoor serial young Entrepreneur and Founder of the first job site for women in the Middle East Twffaha, told ArabCrunch:

As an entrepreneur in Sudan I find this appalling and disappointing, while these same companies claim that they pursue open standards to make the web a more open place, they ban specific countries, this is a total hypocrisy. What's next? we will not be allowed to edit our own Wikipedia pages? In an era where we call for different people to sit down and engage in fruitful conversations, we should allow these people to use the tools and platforms available like everyone else. I'm worried that other companies will follow suit and eventually Sudan and others will be web outcasts.

According to him GoDaddy hosted websites and any Google Downloaded product (Gtalk, Google Gears ..etc), are blocked and cannot be accessed from Sudan.

In her call to me Luo suggested to me to write a guest post for Linkedin Blog, however I think they might change their mind, since I am actively reporting this :P

Written by alNaser · comments (0)
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AnasOnline blog reports (Arabic link) that Linkedin (AC Group here) completely blocked all Syrian users. According to the blog post:

3 weeks ago when Linkedin blocked all Syrian IPs users, but they were able to access the site by using IP changing programs (such as Tor), but in the last days, Linkedin blocked all Syrian users even if they changed their IPs,  and when the users try to access the website this message appears to them:

Access to this account has been suspended. Please contact Customer Service to resolve this problem

He also said that once you email Linkedin customer service, they will tell you, your account was blocked because you are Syrian.

For those who do not know Linkedin: it is a professional social networking, like facebook but for the business users.

A source in Syria confirmed to ArabCrunch that linkedin is behind the block, the source back this because according to them, when trying to access linkedin.com the source got” TCP error” with this message:

A communication error occurred: “”

The Web Server may be down, too busy, or experiencing other problems preventing it from responding to requests. You may wish to try again at a later time.

For assistance, contact your network support team.

The source noted that when trying to access the websites that are blocked by Syrian government like facebook, the source only gets a blank page.

The source accessed the website via a proxy program and it worked but could not go any farther.

According to sources in Syria, many US companies blocks their websites to Syrian users, Like Google and Sun Microsystems, who both blocks all types of download from their websites, also Google blocks code.google.com a setback for Syrian developers.

“The Syrian user fears the day when he cannot access Gmail or Google search engine.”  Anas said in the post, and I also fear this because I love Gmail so much.

Anas also offer all these blocked programs for free to download at this Written by alNaser · comments (8)
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