Turkey accidentally blocks Google’s Blogger

ISTANBUL - Demirören News Agency

A Turkish court has accidentally blocked Google’s blogging platform Blogger due to a typo in its ruling, an expert said.

The 10th Criminal Court of Peace in Istanbul had issued a ruling on July 24 that blocked Blogger for several hours the following day.

According to cyber law expert Yaman Akdeniz, the court intended to block access to a single blog, which contains customer complaints and criticism against Bilge Adam, a Turkish company that provides education and training services.

But the ruling included an “@” instead of a “.” in the URL to be blocked, which became “http://bilgeadam-magdurlari@blogspot.com” instead of “http://bilgeadam-magdurlari.blogspot.com”

Some internet service providers (ISP) did not notice this typo, which led to a blanket ban on the whole Blogger platform.

“Access to Blogspot resumed only after this error was corrected. This is not acceptable. If the company’s attorney filed the court a wrong URL, the judge or ISPs should have fixed it,” Akdeniz said in a tweet.

Some Twitter users also were surprised that the single blog that should have been blocked was still accessible in Turkey on July 26, as the court fixed the error but its corrected ruling is yet to be executed.