--- a/tests/distance/test_distance_meta_levenshtein.py
+++ b/tests/distance/test_distance_meta_levenshtein.py
@@ -118,6 +118,7 @@
             self.cmp.dist_abs('ATCAACGAGT', 'AACGATTAG'), 2.9317526638
         )
 
+    @unittest.skip('cannot download in Debian build')
     def test_meta_levenshtein_corpus(self):
         """Test abydos.distance.MetaLevenshtein with corpus."""
         q3_corpus = UnigramCorpus(word_tokenizer=QGrams(qval=3))
--- a/tests/distance/test_distance_softtf_idf.py
+++ b/tests/distance/test_distance_softtf_idf.py
@@ -83,6 +83,7 @@
             self.cmp.dist('ATCAACGAGT', 'AACGATTAG'), 0.5323287863
         )
 
+    @unittest.skip('cannot download in Debian build')
     def test_softtf_idf_corpus(self):
         """Test abydos.distance.SoftTFIDF.sim & .dist with corpus."""
         download_package('en_qgram', silent=True)
--- a/tests/distance/test_distance_tf_idf.py
+++ b/tests/distance/test_distance_tf_idf.py
@@ -74,6 +74,7 @@
             self.cmp.dist('ATCAACGAGT', 'AACGATTAG'), 0.5323287863
         )
 
+    @unittest.skip('cannot download in Debian build')
     def test_tf_idf_corpus(self):
         """Test abydos.distance.TFIDF.sim & .dist with corpus."""
         q3_corpus = UnigramCorpus(word_tokenizer=QGrams(qval=3))
--- a/tests/util/test_data.py
+++ b/tests/util/test_data.py
@@ -37,6 +37,7 @@
     DEFAULT_URL = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chrislit/'
     DEFAULT_URL += 'abydos-data/master/index.xml'
 
+    @unittest.skip('cannot download in Debian build')
     def test_data(self):
         """Test abydos.util._data."""
         self.assertTrue(isinstance(list_installed_packages(), list))