Soon after its launch a number of prominent Persian bloggers began using the website, which in turn attracted an increasing number of users. This profile turned Balatarin into the destination of choice for people in search of links and news about Iran. Aziz Ashofteh joined the Balatarin team in early October 2006, followed by other team members and volunteers who contributed to its development and maintenance over time, most of whom are known by their pseudonyms. On February 1, 2007, only 6 months after Balatarin was launched, the Iranian Ministry of Information and Communication Technology blocked access to the website. In response, Balatarin asked users to call the ministry and complain. The ministry explained that the reason for blocking the website was a link to an article that contained rumors of Khamenei's death. Balatarin then created a number of new domains, including balatarin.info; but these, too, were blocked once they were discovered by the Iranian government. Currently, most Balatarin users in Iran access the site through proxy servers. From early December 2009, the Iranian government started to illegally redirect all Balatarin visitors from Iran to a government propaganda website called "Nabavi Green Movement". Balatarin is the subject of daily tirades by the state-run newspaper, Kayhan, which accuses the website and its management of being an instrument of foreign, anti-Islamic agencies, the same accusations that it levels at Facebook and Twitter., Before the 2013 Iranian presidential election, the cultural deputy commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was quoted as saying "Four years ago, we didn't know how to combat Facebook, Twitter, Balatarin and BBC, but now we are prepared and know how to deal with them." On February 3, 2009, hackers had transferred the domains and assigned them to a new DNS. A campaign was launched by several Persian language bloggers to support the return of Balatarin back online. Fars News Agency suggested that the website was hacked by Islamist hackers, since only a few links related to the Israeli invasion into Gaza had been promoted by users in Balatarin during the 3-week-long clash, and that the links posted by the pro-government users had often been disregarded. During protests on February 14, 2011, Balatarin was brought down with a massive DDOS attack, and continued to face downtime during major protests. A fake SSL certificate was issued for Balatarin.com through DigiNotar, a Dutch Certificate Authority, when hackers hacked into DigiNotar. There is no report on whether the rogue SSL certificate was used to intercept traffic to Balatarin from Iran.