Iranian regime orders blocking of Instagram

                          

The Iranian regime has ordered the blocking of social networking sire Instagram after complaints from 'private plaintiffs'.

The state-run Mehr news agency, affiliated with the regime's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, quoted an 'informed official' as saying: "The judicial order for filtering the service has been sent to the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology for execution.

"Private plaintiffs have filed complaints because the network invaded their privacy.

"The filtering order for Instagram is not related to the decisions that are being made by the Committee for Determining Criminal Web Content, and this is a judicial order that has been directly sent from the prosecutor's office to the ICT."

Millions of websites are blocked in Iran, including half of the world's top 500 most visited sited including those related to health, science, sports, news, and even shopping. The regime is also one of only three countries in the world to block Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.