Iran: Foreign social media have to handover data of Iranian

TEHRAN — Iran's state TV is reporting that the Supreme Council of Cyberspace has set a one-year deadline for foreign social media companies to provide authorities with all of their data related to Iranian users, or else face a ban.

The TV channel quotes Abolhasan Firouzabadi, the secretary of the council, as saying that all data "held by foreign social media related to Iranian citizens," such as pictures and movies shared by Iranians, "have to move to Iran." He did not elaborate.

The measure will likely affect the Russian Telegram app, the most popular instant messaging service in Iran, and the picture-sharing app, Instagram.

Iran blocks Facebook and many other social media and messaging sites. Iran's youth and tech-savvy citizens use proxy servers or other workarounds to bypass the ban.