Gary Cutlack - 

Iran’s mobile networks have been blocking the word “dollar” on their internal SMS systems, in a slightly rubbish attempt to stop its people talking about and sharing news of the country’s local currency’s latest plunge on the international markets.

As well as explicitly blocking text messages that use the word dollar to discuss the most recent exchange rate plunge, the local term for “foreign money” was also resulting in SMS messages being rejected.

As you might expect from such a clumsy attempt at censorship, there are plenty of ways around it. Messages using the term “USD” or “euro” or even just the dollar symbol were being delivered as normal to the mobile phones of people who concern themselves with the serious business news. [Middle East Online via Textually]

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