SafeWeb joined the ranks of some 20-odd secure surfing Web sites with its launch last October, but as the fist "surfing portal" to apply financial transaction-level encryption technology to the entire Web experience (and to do it for free), the company says it has garnered some sizeable growth in its first few weeks, doubling its user base despite the competition.

Unfortunately, the San Francisco-based company has also garnered some censorship, with reports that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has moved to block its citizens from accessing SafeWeb's secure surfing site.

The conservative Gulf Arab kingdom has a history of Internet censorship, most recently when it cut off some 60,000 subscribers in the country from accessing the discussion forums on Yahoo! Chats last August (See No Yahoo! in Saudi!). Saudi Arabia spent two years developing a secure infrastructure to help it block "inappropriate" content from the desktops of its estimated 300,000 Internet users, including installing a supervising body (KACST) to monitor the Internet there.

"I have been able to use SafeWeb to access the many sites that have been blocked by my government, such as chat rooms and international news sites," wrote one Saudi Arabian citizen in an email correspondence to the company.

SafeWeb says a number of Saudi citizens had been using its service to bypass the government's censorship, but recent reports have alerted the company that it has been added to the Kingdom's list of inappropriate sites.

"We expected that certain countries might someday prevent their citizens from accessing our service," says Jon Chun, co-founder and President of SafeWeb. "However, we did not expect it to happen so soon."

SafeWeb functions as a simple starting point for encrypted surfing. Users simply key-in any URL into a submit box, which SafeWeb loads in separate encrypted page. The service also blocks third party cookies (explaining in simple English what each cookie was trying to obtain), masks a surfer's IP address and allows users to turn off all pop-up windows. The service requires no downloads, and its founder say the company was built with the express purpose of enabling Internet users in countries like Saudi Arabia to surf more freely.

"When we set out to build the SafeWeb technology, we quickly realized the socially transformative effects it could have on closed societies like China, Iran and Saudi Arabia," says Stephen Hsu, co-founder and CEO of SafeWeb. "We have been working to develop technology to fight censorship and promote freedom of expression and a significant portion of our traffic is coming from highly regulated countries. We are pleased to see that our efforts are beginning to make a difference in the international community."

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Chun says the company is working on a next level of its technology that will prevent any government or company from blocking access to SafeWeb.