130 Thousand Mobile Applications in Iran Are Authorized by the Government

No matter if you’re an owner of a website, an application or a Telegram channel, Iran’s government has decided to create an online certificate called SHAMAD to verify the activities of content creators over the web.

SHAMAD was first created with the purpose of reducing spam text messages in the country, but its purpose has been changed in order to help organize the content over the internet.

Since the introduction of Channels by Telegram as a tool for broadcasting messages to a large audience in September 2015, many Iranians have been using this app as their primary media to follow the news and share entertaining content.

With the big rise of Telegram channels in Iran, “SHAMAD” became a certificate to verify these channels; in order to let the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance control the online activities and organize them easily.

According to Morteza Mousavian, Head of Iran’s Digital Media Center, there are over 300 thousand Farsi channels and groups on Telegram, of which 7,500 channels are active and have received their SHAMAD certificate.

Related :

Telegram Channels Break the Record Number of Farsi Content over the Internet

Currently, 130,000 mobile applications, 70,000 websites and also 17,000 Telegram channels have received their SHAMAD certificate as reported by Mehr News.

It’s completely free to get one and as Mr. Mousavian said, “the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance will support the registered applicants”. He also explained how the content will be supervised: “People themselves will supervise the content. Since cyber-media content and merchandise trade is carried out without intermediaries, people who are the best observers can help the government in this area to identify abusive channels of fraud. People can detect and report fraudulent channels and channels with malicious social and fraudulent content by referring to the link and the channel id.”

As the authorities have mentioned, it just takes 3 minutes to add your information on SHAMAD’s portal and get a certificate via shamad.saramad.ir.