AT&T Admits They Blocked 4chan, Blames DDOS, Worked Around Issue

AT&T today issued a formal statement, acknowledging the blocking of 4chan. As of early this morning, they have removed the block.

The company blamed a computer virus triggering a DDOS attack on the site. This DDOS attack was saturating one of their primary backbones, which routed to 4chan’s hosting facility. AT&T claims the issue had nothing to do with the content on 4chan, but declined to comment to CentralGadget.com as to why they did not notify 4chan’s administrators.

This anticlimactic end leaves few feeling satisfied. While AT&T may, or may not have had technical cause to block 4chan, it is clear they did not follow their own protocol by leaving 4chan administrators in the dark about the situation. This did not help solve the problem, as 4chan could not re-route traffic… not knowing why AT&T banned the server.

Further, AT&T’s handling does little to exonerate the company, by only providing ex-post-facto status reports. And, AT&T is appearing to walk away from the situation arguing that they can repeat such practices in the future. The company has not said that they will work in the future to better communicate with web site owners, should such an event happen again.