Censorship:
In many ways, the cultural and religious underpinnings of the UAE have directed the course for Internet censorship.   The very conservative Emirians have requested that safeguards be put on the Internet.  Numerous citizens, probably the older generations, started calling the Dubai Police Department complaining that their children were accessing pornographic sites.  In response, ETISALAT set up a proxy service whereby a direct Internet connection is not available. 

The government claims that this service is only to block pornographic sites, rather than political or cultural sites.   The government has also claimed that the proxy service decreases the possibilities for copyright infringement and commercial fraud. The website, "ETISALAT Charges Too Much”, regularly has lists of websites to which Emirians are unable to connect. Specifically, the primary complain about the "banned" websites is the inability to link to gay and/or lesbian sites.

It has been vehemently denied that the government tracks individual users on-line activities. Navigator and Microsoft Explorer, two of the most popular Internet software systems, are configured to use the proxy service.  A website on the Internet, “ETISALAT Charges Too Much”, has regular discussions about this issue.  Individuals who have complaints about ETISALAT services, products, and pricing mechanisms post their issues here. 

There are ways in which in which the Emirians can bypass the control regime by the proxy service.  The first way that people get around it is to just dial into a foreign server.  This can get very expensive because the user would be paying long distance fees for connection to the Internet.  Furthermore, other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Yemen, and Kuwait) have initiated plans to link their system directly to the UAE’s.  The intent is to provide a “unified GCC protection against undesired websites" (46).  A user can also install a dedicated line to access the Internet directly to bypass the censorship regime (47).  This could however could be prohibitively expensive to many users.

Business:
The proxy server is only in place for individual household usage.  Businesses and academic institutions that connect to the Internet via a dedicated line avoid the proxy server.  ETISALAT claims that the proxy is there only to protect family values so it is necessary for firms to use it.