Ministry of Information Technology and Telecom has confirmed that it has received ban orders from Lahore High Court on Thursday to ban Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, MSN, Bing, YouTube, Amazon etc , reported BBC Urdu, citing unnamed sources in the Ministry.

It merits mentioning here that inter-ministerial committee of IT Ministry decides on how to and why to ban or not to ban a website. Committee is reportedly meeting today to discuss the implication, execution and procedures of the ban.

IT Ministry has an option of getting stay-order from Supreme Court against LHC’s decision; however, all these options will be discussed in today’s meeting.

Unlike Facebook’s ban previous month, LHC’s current ban orders for search engines were not welcomed by the masses.

Earlier this week, Lahore High Court had ordered to immediately block nine websites for publishing and promoting sacrilegious material while hearing a writ petition filed by a citizen, Muhammad Sidiq, seeking a ban on the websites for publishing blasphemous materials and twisting the facts and figure of Holy Quran.

PTA has already sent a summary to Prime Minister of Pakistan to discuss ban options of offensive websites – summary has details on implications of banning search engines and social media.

Ban includes 9 websites, which are considered as backbone of internet, blocking them will mean a total internet blackout in the country.

Update:

Inter-Ministerial committee has decided to ban all those URLs containing blasphemous content, as directed by LHC, however, search engines won’t get blocked in accordance to decision that was earlier taken by Federal Cabinet.

In this regards, Ministry of IT and Telecom will send a list of 17 websites to PTA for a permanent ban.

Moreover, Ministry in its letter will ask PTA to keep monitoring the web for any occurrence of blasphemous content to block them immediately.

Search Engines won’t get Banned:

Committee decided not to ban search engines, as they don’t host or store any content. However, options are considered to make it impossible to search for certain keywords on search engines.

Facebook Boycott on 20th May 2010

Facebook is Going to Get Banned in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has blocked the popular video sharing website YouTube in a bid to contain blasphemous material, officials said on Thursday.

The blockade came hours after the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) directed Internet service providers to stop access to social network Facebook indefinitely on Wednesday because of an online competition to draw the Prophet Mohammad (Peace be upon him) in gross violation of fundamental human rights pertaining to one’s religion.

Wahaj-us-Siraj, the CEO of Nayatel, an Internet service provider, said PTA issued an order late on Wednesday seeking an “immediate” blockade of YouTube.

“It was a serious instruction as they wanted us to do it quickly and let them know after that,” he said while talking to a UK-based news agency.

YouTube was also blocked in the Muslim country in 2007 for about a year for what it called un-Islamic videos.

A PTA official, who declined to be identified, said the action was taken after the authority determined that some sacrilegious caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad were transferred from Facebook to YouTube.

Representation of any prophet is deemed un-Islamic and blasphemous in Islam, let alone the caricature or cartoon of these divine personages.

Siraj said the blocking of the two websites would cut up to 25 percent of total Internet traffic in Pakistan.

“It’ll have an impact on the overall Internet traffic as they eat up 20 to 25 percent of the country’s total 65 giga-bytes traffic,” he said.

Publications of similar cartoons in Danish newspapers in 2005 sparked deadly protests in Muslim countries. Around 50 people were killed during violent protests in Muslim countries in 2006 over the cartoons, five of them in Pakistan.

Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Denmark’s embassy in Islamabad in 2008, killing six people, saying it was in revenge for publication of the caricatures.

After clear discrimination of Facebook for not banning blasphemous Fan Page, Ministry of Information Technology and Telecom has directed PTA to ban Facebook Page in Pakistan, told us sources close to authority.

A reliable source, who is in direct contact with Secretary MoIT, told ProPakistani that ministry has issued the directive to PTA to ban said blasphemous content in the country.

Ministry of Information Technology directs PTA for banning any URL or whole of website in case of any inappropriate content available on it.

It is yet to be ascertained if the whole Facebook will be banned or just a single URL will be filtered. In both the situations, Step is inline with thousands of Facebook users and according to their urge of boycotting Facebook on May 20th.

It merits mentioning here that a Fan Page on Facebook is encouraging its members to draw Prophet Mohammad’s drawings (Sallallahu Alayhi Wa-aal-hi-Wasallam).

Despite thousands of requests, Facebook didn’t put this page down even it violated Facebook’s own terms of services.

Update: (3:14 PM – May 18, 2010) We have received confirmation from PTA that directive has been issued to all ISPs for blocking a single URL (of the particular Fan Page). Order was issued by Yawar Yasin, Director Enforcement PTA.

PTCL has confirmed the recipient of the order and said that specific URL is in process of being blocked throughout its network.

Update: (8:24 PM – May 18, 2010) Facebook fan page in question is still opening on various ISPs, however, reports are coming that specific URL is inaccessible on selected ISPs. Complete blackout is expected later tonight.

Recently Facebook  introduces a tool in their official blog, that notifies you when someone logins to your Facebook account by sending you a email or SMS text messaging. This tool will give you an idea when or from where your Facebook account logins and also helps you in recognizing when a hacker has broken your security.

So, You can quickly take an action on this by changing your accounts password or by contacting Facebook .

Once you enables this notifications tool you will be required to identify each device or computer from where you access your Facebook account. You will be able to get list of machines from where you account is accessed and of course no one can access you account without filling this security check .

So, Here is a tutorial how to activates this  feature!

STEP 1: Log in to your account & Open Account Settings:-

First sign in to your account and click the  ”Account” word in the top right corner of the browser window. A drop-down menu of options will displayed, then click on “Account Settings,” as pictured below.

Now , Scroll down your setting page until you see “Account Settings” and press the button which below this option.

  

Check “Yes” when you see the prompt, “Would you like to receive notifications for logins from new devices?” Then click “Save.” The feature is turned on. Now check your security!

Step 2: Login & Identify Your Computer:-

Now, login again to your account and this time you will see a register your computer page, as a pictured below.

Now, Enter’s Your computer name and check the box “Don’t Ask Me Again From This Computer” if you are not using on public computer or if you are using on your personal computer just check this box!

Now again Go to your account settings and go to account security and see which device is register, as a pictured below

That’s it , Now you can check here , which computer is accessing your account or when !

Google translation, a tool to translate from one language to 57 another languages, has added Urdu in the list.

Meaning that, now you can translate 57 languages into Urdu and from Urdu to 57 well known languages of the world.

This remarkable achievement will greatly help in localizing the content by presenting foreign language websites in Urdu language through Google’s web page translation tools.

At this moment, we must not forget PakTranslations.com that served for long, as only Urdu language translation tool available on web. But this move from Google is going to hamper PakTranslations, by large, particularly, when it comes to results.

Just to add, Google Translation allows users to upload documents and get them translated with a single click.

Also you can use Google Translate for Urdu to any other Language dictionary.

About the quality of translation, given that in ALPHA version, results are amazing good, but not the perfect. Let’s expect further enhancements with time.

Try Google Translation yourself by clicking this link

via=’ProPakistani.PK’