PTA Has Blocked Over 800,000 Websites Due to Objectionable Content in 2 Years

During the last two years, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has blocked over 800,000 websites and web pages that had inappropriate and objectionable content.

The statistics came into light when a PTA official informed the Senate Standing Committee on IT & Telecom last week.

According to an official document from PTA, available to ProPakistani, the action was taken under the Prevention from Electronic Crime Act (PECA), 2016.

The blocked sites, pages and video channels contained anti-state, anti-judiciary, blasphemous, defamatory, pornographic, proxy or sectarian/hate speech.

The objectionable content was mostly found on Facebook, Twitter, Dailymotion, YouTube and other miscellaneous websites.

In the last two years, PTA blocked 769,870 pornographic sites or pages, and 5,064 websites or web pages with anti-state content and 4,528 with anti-judiciary content.

Progress Google, Facebook and Twitter

PTA informed the Senate that on the orders of Islamabad High Court, the authority has conducted meetings with representatives of Google, Facebook and Twitter so as to streamline the blocking procedure of objectionable content.

The Senate Committee was told that there has been significant progress in the process and a majority of PTA’s complaints are being entertained.

Both YouTube and Twitter have provided PTA with dedicated portal access for lodging complaints directly.

Blocking Procedure

PTA has developed an e-portal through which the stakeholder organizations can lodge complaints. There are 30 federal and provincial government organizations that are counted as stakeholders and have the direct access to the portal to register complaints.

The general public can lodge complaints via the PTA’s email address – [email protected].

Blocked Websites

Categories Dailymotion Facebook Misc. Twitter YouTube Total
Anti-state 47 3345 884 719 69 5064
Anti-judiciary 24 3086 52 1296 70 4528
Blasphemy 212 8299 18296 2612 5070 34489
Defamatory/Impersonation 12 524 121 167 62 886
Miscellaneous 3 350 2270 15 1015 3653
Pornography 25 407 768610 811 17 769870
Proxy  – 9 10177 1 9 10196
Sectarian/Hate Speech 3 1348 245 160 85 1841
Total 326 17368 800675 5781 6397 830527


    • when it comes to internet their are alot of things that are possible, socks, proxy, Dns, hotspot.


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