Case Study: Paderborn University analyzes domain censorship patterns with WhoisXML API's Website Categorization API

Paderborn University and WhoisXML API Analyzing Domain Censorship

Paderborn University worked with WhoisXML API to support research on domain censorship in Iran and Indonesia. Dennis Suermann, a master’s student in the university’s System Security Department, needed a way to classify tens of thousands of blocked domains that would have been too time-consuming to review manually.

Using WhoisXML API’s Website Categorization API, the researcher automatically categorized the censored domains and identified which website types were most often blocked in each country. WhoisXML API helped him categorize more than 106,000 blocked domains in total, including 58,000+ in Indonesia and 48,000+ in Iran, enabling clear data-driven visualization of censorship patterns.

Paderborn University

Dennis Suermann

Paderborn University