An Iranian court ordered the photo-sharing app Instagram be blocked in the Islamic Republic.
The agency said a court order, stemming from a private lawsuit, had been given to Iran's Ministry of Telecommunications to ban the site. However users in the capital, Tehran, still could access the application.
The decision to block the photo-sharing app Instagram was accepted by the court due to privacy concerns, the latest in a series of websites to be banned in the Islamic Republic. Citizens of the country complained that the social network breaks confidentiality of their data.
Blocking Instagram can proceed until the authorities manage to develop a "thin filtration" mechanism for a social network. Iran's police chief said last year that the Islamic Republic was developing new software to control social networking sites, though it is unclear whether it was ever put to use.
At the beginning of May mobile application WhatsApp, which belongs to Facebook as well as Instagram, was blocked in Iran. The decision on access restriction to a messenger was made by the special working group on illegal content detection in a network.
However then the Supreme Council of Cyberspace headed by President Hassan Rouhani recognized a ban illegal and cancelled it.
Social websites such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have already been blocked by censors, though many young and Web-savvy Iranians use proxy servers or other workarounds to bypass the controls.
