Why Governments Block Websites: India's Gambling Crackdown Explained
The Indian government has blocked approximately 300 websites and apps in a sweeping crackdown on illegal online gambling and betting. Acting under the newly introduced Online Gaming Act 2025 and the broader powers granted by the IT Act, authorities have ordered internet service providers across the country to restrict access to these platforms. The move is one of the largest coordinated website-blocking actions India has taken in recent memory, and it raises a question that goes well beyond gambling: how does government website blocking actually work, and what does it mean for ordinary internet users?
How Governments Block Websites
When a government orders a website blocked, it does not delete the site or shut down its servers. The content stays online. What changes is the path your internet traffic takes to reach it.
Most blocking happens at the ISP level. Governments instruct internet service providers to intercept requests for specific domain names or IP addresses and return an error instead of the actual page. The most common methods include:
- DNS blocking: Your ISP's DNS resolver refuses to look up the blocked domain, so your browser never finds the site's address. - IP blocking: Traffic destined for specific server IP addresses is dropped entirely. - URL filtering: Deep packet inspection (DPI) allows ISPs to examine traffic and block specific URLs, even on sites that are otherwise accessible. - BGP route withdrawal: At a national level, governments can remove routes to entire IP ranges, making destinations unreachable.
India's IT Act gives the government broad authority to direct ISPs to implement these blocks quickly, often without public disclosure of which specific sites are targeted or why. The Online Gaming Act 2025 adds a dedicated legal framework targeting gambling and betting platforms specifically.
The Problem With Broad Blocking Powers
Blocking illegal gambling sites sounds straightforward. The complications emerge in the details.
When authorities block by IP address, they can inadvertently cut off access to legitimate services sharing the same infrastructure. When they block by domain, mirror sites and alternative domains can pop up within hours, making the blocks easy to circumvent while law-abiding users face friction. And when blocking orders are issued without transparency, there is no clear public record of what has been blocked or why, which makes accountability difficult.
India already has a significant history of internet blocking. The IT Act's Section 69A has been used to block tens of thousands of URLs over the years, covering everything from political content to security concerns. Critics, including digital rights organizations, have consistently pointed out that the law allows blocks to be issued without notifying the public or the website operators, and without any mandatory judicial review before the block goes into effect.
The gambling crackdown fits this pattern. Blocking 300 platforms in one action is significant in scale, and while the stated goal is consumer protection, the legal tools being used are the same ones that have drawn scrutiny in other contexts.
What This Means For You
If you are in India and rely on the open internet for work, research, or communication, this situation is worth paying attention to for a few reasons.
First, overblocking is a real risk. When governments move quickly to block large numbers of sites, legitimate platforms sometimes get caught in the net, either because they share infrastructure with a blocked site or because automated systems flag them incorrectly.
Second, the legal framework matters. The Online Gaming Act 2025 and the IT Act together give authorities considerable discretion. Understanding which laws govern your internet access helps you know your rights if a service you rely on suddenly becomes unavailable.
Third, the methods used to block sites are the same methods that affect your privacy more broadly. ISP-level filtering means your provider can see what sites you are trying to visit, even when you cannot reach them. That is a data point about your behavior, regardless of whether you are doing anything wrong.
A VPN routes your traffic through an encrypted tunnel to a server in another location before it reaches the open internet. This means your ISP sees an encrypted connection to the VPN server, not a list of every site you visit. It also means that DNS blocks and IP blocks imposed at the ISP level do not apply to your connection in the same way. For people living under restrictive regulatory environments, a reliable VPN is one of the most practical tools for maintaining access to information and keeping browsing private.
Internet Freedom and the Bigger Picture
India's gambling crackdown is a case study in how quickly and quietly internet access can change. The sites blocked this week may be genuinely harmful. But the mechanisms used to block them, and the lack of transparency around those decisions, are worth understanding regardless of how you feel about online gambling.
Governments around the world use similar tools for purposes that range from the uncontroversial to the deeply contested. Website blocking is not inherently good or bad; it depends entirely on what is being blocked, under what legal authority, with what oversight, and with what recourse for people who are affected.
Staying informed about how these systems work is the first step toward making thoughtful decisions about your own digital privacy. hide.me VPN is built around a strict no-logs policy and strong encryption, making it a practical option for users who want to keep their browsing private and maintain access to the open internet, whatever the regulatory environment around them looks like. You can also learn more about how VPN encryption works and why choosing a no-logs VPN matters when evaluating your privacy options.