Fahmi said MCMC had found that some ISPs still allowed access to harmful websites, such as pornographic and gambling sites.

“The rationale (behind the DNS redirection) is that we want to prevent access to harmful sites, especially pornography and many online gambling websites.

“We do not intend to restrict freedom of speech,” he told reporters after launching Astro Radio’s KITAfm in Shah Alam today.

Fahmi, however, said website operators who feel that their site was wrongly blocked can appeal to an independent tribunal, which operates under MCMC but is chaired by a High Court judge.

“So, they can submit their appeals, and the tribunal will decide whether to lift the block or not,” he said.

The DNS redirection was reported in a now-archived “FAQ” posted on telecommunications provider Maxis Bhd’s website, which said it will impact entities using public DNS services like Google DNS or Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1.

DNS is a system that translates website names into numeric IP addresses.

A public DNS can bypass government blocks, but with DNS redirection, requests to these blocked sites are rerouted to local DNS servers, thus blocking access.

On Aug 6, digital rights group Sinar Project raised concerns after discovering that some ISPs, including Maxis, had been secretly redirecting DNS requests intended for third-party services back to their own servers.