Indonesia asks Cloudflare to block illegal online gambling sites
The ministry has given Cloudflare 14 working days to comply.
Indonesia.- The Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Digitalisation has asked the internet service provider Cloudflare to help block illegal online gambling sites. In a press conference in Jakarta on Wednesday, November 19, the ministry’s director general of digital space supervision, Alexander Sabar, said most of the online gambling sites operating in the jurisdiction use Cloudflare’s infrastructure.
He cited recent research which found that 76 per cent of 10,000 online gambling sites sampled relied on Cloudflare’s infrastructure. Most were using the provider’s services like IP masking and swift domain transfers to bypass content blocks.
Sabar said: “Cloudflare should be working with us. It should not accept all requests for content delivery network services. If they harm Indonesia, Cloudflare should not accept them. This is the context of moderation; they should be filtering.”
Sabar said Cloudflare is among the 25 Electronic System Providers (PSEs) that have not yet registered with the ministry as required by the Ministerial Regulation No. 5/2020 on Private Electronic System Providers. He said the ministry has given it 14 working days to comply with its obligations or face administrative sanctions, such as service termination.
Sabar suggested that websites using Cloudflare’s services should start looking into alternative internet service providers so that they won’t be affected in the event of access being blocked by the government. He said that Indonesia is open to global platforms, provided they show a commitment to compliance.
