Havana Travel Forum

I'm aware that Internet access in Cuba is considered generally available for tourists, but I'd like to know of any first hand experience with e-censorship or access being denied to web addresses outside of Cuba. In particular, I need to use Hushmail.com for sensitive email needs but heard it and similar services may be blocked by the Cuban gov't.
Thanks

You have to assume that any mails sent may be read. The authorities do check outgoing and incoming email, also phone calls, but obviously not all of them, so sometimes it's possible to get emails through more by luck than anything. By all accounts the authorities are not hugely technically adept and there are ways round the system, but I have no idea how. Because of the restrictions on internet access for Cuban people most Cuban people are not very IT adept at all.

I know this doesn't really answer your question, but what I'm trying to say is that if the authorities are aware of secure/dicreet email then they probably have blocked them.

A little different answer from the above.
In the small town where I live, there are at least ten people i can name who can compete with Indians when it comes to tech saavy. In fact they go thorugh and clean up everything in my laptap each time i return after a trip. The Ministry of Interior has very competent computer people working for them. If you are using a .cu address it goes through just one server and it can be monitored.
I have never heard of cuban government blocking a particular site but then again they might monitor suspicious sites. Much more cubans than ever before have access to email but very few, despite the growing number, have access to internet. Having said that residents can get email and internet in the "black market".
As long as you are not sprouting forth counter revolutionary slogans and avoid certains names and phrases ( Mas Canosa, Miami Mafia, Fidel Castro etc) your emails wont be checked. wi fi access is increasing at various hotels. internet charges for tourists are rather high by comparison to other communist countries. but at least it is available.

Strike anything I said and refer to what Cochinjew said - I was working from second hand information and he lives there so knows what the situation really is - sorry about that.

I don't believe the Cuba government have the technical know how to record or monitor emails sent via say Yahoo and so on. They would either to have a monitoring program on the PCs to gather keystrokes or displayed text.

They could record what urls you use but recording the text is a different matter all together.

Tip alway clear your history, cache, files and so on from internet explorer when you finish your session.

Please do not underestimate the IT capacity of the Cubans. In my opinion, they are the best in Latin America, for better or worse.
they may not be able to monitor the text sent from webbsased site but any information you send to a .cu mail, they can read. I have met people whose job it is to do so, that does not mean that they read all emails, but they have the capacity to do so.
this capacity exists in other countries as well, not just in Cuba, like they have the capacity to trace cellular text messages. the technology is improving very fast all over the world, and good luck