Pulse Shutdown Tracker Methodology

About the Pulse Shutdown Tracker

Internet shutdowns are a harmful and disproportionate response to complex issues.

We’ve been tracking them since 2019, using a range of sources to record the length and impact of individual events. Our aim is to acknowledge and empower local activists, and to provide data for targeted research and technical monitoring.

Defining Internet Shutdowns

As members of the Keep It On Coalition we use the shared definition of Internet shutdowns to guide our work:

An Internet shutdown is an intentional disruption of Internet or electronic communications, rendering them inaccessible or effectively unusable, for a specific population or within a location, often to exert control over the flow of information.

Regional and national scale disruptions to Internet connectivity are included in this definition, as well as application-level blocking and content blocking, where Internet connectivity remains available, but access to certain websites or applications is limited.

How we track Internet shutdowns

We use a range of sources: available technical data, public reporting, official statements, civil society documentation, and other contextual sources, and we aim to assign a verification level to each.

Acknowledged: Government authorities or ISPs acknowledge the Internet shutdown on official documents or communication.
Confirmed: Technical evidence from network measurements confirms local reports of Internet shutdown.
Unconfirmed: There are local reports, including news or social media discussions, mentioning the shutdown, but there is no official corroboration, and the technical evidence is insufficient or unclear.

We also track the geographical reach of shutdowns. These are:

National: a shutdown that has occurred at national level
Regional: where a shutdown takes place within a region or at local level
Service blocking: Where it affects one or more of the top 10 web services in a country. To be included, the service blocking must be at national level.

We don’t track:

Internet outages attributed to natural disasters, human error, or malicious activity.
Censorship of information or news services.
Artificial Internet limitations before 2019.

Criteria for meeting the definition of a shutdown

For a shutdown to appear on the Pulse Shutdown Tracker it needs to meet all of the following requirements. It must:

Be artificially induced, as evident from reputable sources, including government statements and orders.
Remove Internet access.
Affect access to a significant group of people.

Our data sources

To ensure we report only deliberate, and mandated disruptions, the Pulse team closely monitors Internet traffic patterns from the following trusted sources:

If our data sources indicate a drop in Internet traffic or show that a popular web service has been blocked, we cross-check for:

Media reports from reputable sources.
Orders issued by authorities to Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
Confirmed experiences from our partners and community members.

If we can verify intentionality, we create an incident page. We update pages as we receive new information. When we see that traffic is back to at least 80% of what it was before the shutdown, we mark the shutdown as "ended".

What we report on for each shutdown event

Incident page information types
Data type	Description and sources
Country	We use the We use ISO 3166 country codes and names to define countries. Internet Society does not hold any opinion whatsoever concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area of its authorities.
Start and end date and time	The timestamp (ISO 8601) represents the duration of the shutdown event. The date and time are based on technical evidence or, where available, official government orders. In case of discrepancy, we use the technical evidence.
Local impact	A qualitative description of the effects on people in the area of the shutdown.
Related documentation	Can include screenshots of official orders or statements, government decrees, or verified executive speeches.
Other supporting information	Links, screenshots, and interpretation of Internet measurements that show a decrease or stop of Internet traffic, either to a country, or to a popular web service.
Experiences	Human-centered narratives or case studies that show the personal impact. Can include interview quotes, articles, blogs, and social media posts.
Geographical reach	Classification of national, regional, or service blocking.
Verification level	We classify the reliability of each shutdown event as either Acknowledged, Confirmed, or Unconfirmed.
Affected region(s)	This is the affected first-degree administrative division, such as a state or province. More detailed information about smaller areas such as cities or municipalities is captured on the incident page.
Cause or trigger	The primary motivation for the shutdown, such as elections, exams, protests, government action, war/conflict.
Community coverage	Technical evidence and external reports provided by social and non-government organizations.
Related news	Links to credible national and international media coverage.

We seek to include information on each of these on the incident page.

Feedback and contributions

We make every effort to ensure that that no community’s report of lost access is overlooked, and that the data compiled on Internet shutdowns is as complete as possible. But detecting and confirming Internet shutdowns is challenging, which means some events are missed. If you know of an event that you believe should be included in the Pulse Shutdown Tracker, and you can confirm that it meets the criteria in our list, contact us at [email protected]. Include the following information:

The affected area/region
Start and end date/time
Impacted services (if applicable)
Links to any supporting documentation (published articles, government statements, measurement graphs, etc.)

We review all submissions, but cannot guarantee that a reported event will be included in the Shutdown Tracker.

Learn more about Internet Shutdowns

Last updated July 2026