Italy Blocks Reproductive Health Websites Women on Web (WoW) and Women Help Women (WHW) | OONI

In this report, we share OONI data on the blocking of the Women on Web (WoW) and Women Help Women (WHW) websites in Italy. These websites facilitate access to reproductive health care and offer abortion information.

Key findings<br>Our analysis of OONI data collected from OONI Probe tests of Women on Web (www.womenonweb.org) and Women Help Women (womenhelp.org) in Italy between 1 November 2025 and 1 June 2026 indicates that at least 6 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) – including several of Italy&rsquo;s largest networks by end-user population – began blocking access to both domains in mid-February 2026 through DNS tampering.<br>Specifically, key findings include:<br>Concurrent DNS-based blocking of both Women on Web (WoW) and Women Help Women (WHW) across multiple ISPs. Beginning in mid-February 2026, OONI data shows DNS-based interference affecting both Women on Web (www.womenonweb.org) and Women Help Women (womenhelp.org) on the following networks: Fastweb (AS12874), Vodafone Italia (AS30722), EOLO (AS35612), Sky Italia (AS210278), and Iliad/Scaleway (AS29447). The sixth affected network differs by domain: Women on Web was blocked on INTRED (AS41497), while Women Help Women was blocked on WIND TRE (AS1267).<br>Bogon IP responses. For both domains, Fastweb (AS12874) and Iliad/Scaleway (AS29447) returned the bogon IP address 127.0.0.1 during DNS resolution. This behavior was also observed for Women on Web on INTRED (AS41497).<br>NXDOMAIN responses. Vodafone Italia (AS30722) and EOLO (AS35612) returned NXDOMAIN responses for both domains, falsely indicating that the domains did not exist. For Women Help Women, the same behavior was additionally observed on WIND TRE (AS1267).<br>Block page redirection. On Sky Italia (AS210278), requests for both Women on Web and Women Help Women were redirected from mid-February 2026 onwards to the IP address 195.162.95.240, where the server presented a TLS certificate for blocking.it.isp.sky. This hostname mismatch resulted in TLS certificate validation failures.

Introduction<br>Since 2012, the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) builds free software tools and hosts open data to empower the public to monitor, document, and respond to internet censorship around the world. OONI is a nonprofit organization registered in Italy that operates globally.<br>Having pioneered crowdsourced methods for measuring internet censorship, OONI is a leader in the network measurement world. We won the 2012 Access Now Freedom of Expression Tech Prize for actionable ideas on how to use information technology to promote and enable human rights and deliver social good. More recently, we received the Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI) 2023 Community Award.<br>Overall, we measure internet services in a crowdsourced way through network-level experiments run by OONI Probe app users in around 170 countries each month (including Italy). Each of these experiments has a different methodology, all of which are publicly documented. Since these experiments are run from local network vantage points, they offer unique insights into the accessibility or blocking of internet services at the edge of the network . We publish OONI Probe test results (“measurements”) from around the world as open data in real-time.<br>In June 2026, we collaborated with Women on Web (WoW), a feminist nonprofit that facilitates access to abortion information and care, on a joint research report documenting the blocking of Women on Web domains around the world. We previously collaborated with Women on Web on a 2019 report documenting the blocking of Women on Web in several countries (Brazil, Iran, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Türkiye) based on OONI data. This report was the first of its kind, as no other digital abortion providers had been known to face as many government-ordered blockages. In 2020, we also documented the blocking of Women on Web in Spain. In the years following these reports, Women on Web’s work on fighting the censorship of their website has escalated to multiple national court battles.<br>This study builds upon these previous efforts. We investigate and document the blocking of Women on Web (www.womenonweb.org) and Women Help Women (womenhelp.org) in Italy, both of which showed signs of blocking in recent OONI data collected over the last months. The goal of this study is to document and increase transparency around how access to Women on Web (WoW) and Women Help Women (WHW) domains is being restricted in Italy, thereby limiting access to reproductive healthcare and rights information.<br>In this report, we share our findings from the analysis of OONI data, documenting the blocking of Women on Web (www.womenonweb.org) and Women Help Women (womenhelp.org) domains in Italy. Further details are shared in the following methods and findings sections.

Background<br>Abortion is legal upon request in Italy during the first 12 weeks of...