OONI Finds 6 Italian ISPs Blocking Abortion Info Sites via DNS

A new joint report from OONI (Open Observatory of Network Interference), Women on Web (WoW), and Women Help Women (WHW) documents DNS-based blocking of both reproductive health websites across at least six Italian ISPs starting in mid-February 2026.

Based on OONI Probe measurements collected between November 2025 and June 2026, the affected networks include major providers such as Fastweb, Vodafone Italia, EOLO, Sky Italia, Iliad/Scaleway, INTRED, and WIND TRE. Blocking methods varied by provider: some returned the bogon IP 127.0.0.1, others issued false NXDOMAIN responses, and Sky Italia redirected users to a block page with a mismatched TLS certificate, causing validation failures.

For engineers working on censorship measurement and network security, the report is a concrete example of crowdsourced DNS-tampering detection using real-world vantage points. It also extends OONI's earlier work tracking Women on Web blocking in countries like Brazil, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Spain, adding Italy to a growing list of jurisdictions restricting access to reproductive health information at the network layer.