Three UK goes too far and blocks Cydia over 3G

I don’t personally jailbreak, like I mentioned yesterday in our GreenPois0n article, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t think people should have the right to do what they want with their devices. This morning, jailbreakers on Three UK and Three Ireland networks noticed that they were completely locked out of Cydia’s servers over their cellular network.

So, as of this morning, users can not access Cydia’s direct servers, but other repositories are available when users connect to Cydia on the 3G network. We should also point out that users are still able to connect to Cydia’s direct repositories via WiFi.

It seems like this might be a move to stop users from downloading large files over the 3G network. While I don’t agree with the move in the slightest, I have a hard time believing that this was a mistake.

Currently carriers stop users from downloading large files from the App Store over 3G. Most of us don’t complain about it, and we understand the logic behind it. If Three UK and Three Ireland are doing the same thing with the Cydia network, it might be understandable, but blocking Cydia entirely is not acceptable. It’s pretty easy to put up a block on files based on file size.

Wake up Three, you might think you’ve got this all figured out, but it’s probably only a matter of time until someone figures out a work around, especially when it comes to the resourceful nature of the jailbreak community.

Update: TUAW is reporting that Three has blocked Cydia in “error,” and that they’re looking to restore Cydia access. We find it hard to believe that something like this would occur by accident, but we’ll take their word for it. Simon, in the comments below, has pointed out that Vodaphone is already doing this in England. In my opinion, it’s a pretty convenient error to make.

Update 2: Turns out Cydia was put on Three’s adult content blacklist. You can have them remove the block from your account by calling 333. Thanks to Christine and @prenvo below. Guess we officially know now that there’s an adult content blacklist in the UK.

Article Via MacStories

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