Attacks, arrests slowing online news from Iran: Via CNN.com .

Bloody attacks and midnight arrests, combined with a regime growing more technologically savvy, have begun stemming the flow of online information from dissidents in Iran, activists and human rights officials say.

Once emboldened by their ability to dodge the government and spread news about their protests to the world, many in the youth-driven protest movement, they say, are now scared of the consequences of getting caught.

"It's absolutely chilling," said Drewery Dyke, a member of human rights group Amnesty International's Iran team. "The level of fear that has permeated society now, in terms of this issue, is palpable. It's striking.

"There's an absolute hunkering down by the people."

Since June 12, when disputed election results sent tens of thousands of Iranians into the streets to protest, the world has gotten a front-row view of the unrest thanks largely to dissidents using online tools to spread the news.

But as days have turned to weeks, there's been a sharp drop in the number of messages, pictures and videos that supporters outside the country have been receiving.

Iran's text-messaging network was restored this week, almost three weeks after it was disconnected, ILNA, the semi-official Iran Labor News Agency, reported Thursday.

The service was cut a day before the election, the agency reported without giving a reason.

Service was restored across almost all of the country on Monday, and in the capital, Tehran, two days later, the agency reported.

But opposition supporters have been warning each other against using text messages, believing the government is monitoring them, according to many messages posted on Twitter.

"Tell people not to use it for political info -- they are tracking," reads a much-quoted message from a Twitter feed using the name oxfordgirl.

Oxfordgirl said Thursday cell phone service was again down in Iran.

CNN could not confirm the authenticity of any of the posts on Twitter, the popular Web service that allows users to post short messages.

The ability to send multimedia messages -- pictures or video -- by cell phone still has not been restored, ILNA said.

"The information flow unquestionably has been severely restricted," Dyke said. "The clampdown has been multifaceted, including the technological means of jamming or cutting phone lines, of monitoring phone lines, and, of course, the more rough-edged side of arresting journalists and bloggers."

Users of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook have noted that once-active bloggers from Iran have gone quiet. Users in the West who have helped relay news from protesters in Iran say some of their most reliable sources have stopped posting over the past couple of weeks.

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