In November 2017, the country introduced the so-called VPN law, which tried to force companies to block restricted websites. Russia has been wrestling with the growing popularity of VPNs for years. Instead VPN companies still working in the country say they operate by quietly ignoring the rules. But that law-abiding stance is not echoed by all its competitors. “Typical protocols such as OpenVPN and other more or less trivial VPN protocols have been completely blocked.” OpenVPN’s CEO, Francis Dinha, says he has seen no indications that the company's protocol is blocked but adds “we have no way of confirming whether this is true at this point.”į-Secure says it only operates in countries where it can follow local laws. “There has been large-scale disruption of VPN protocols in general over the last two weeks or so,” says Michael Hull, cofounder of Psiphon, adding that his company has always found a way to continue operating. It's not an easy task, but it gets done,” he said on March 15 in a live broadcast on the VK social media platform. Around 20 VPN services have already been blocked in the country, and the authorities have plans to block more, according to politician Alexander Khinshtein, chairman of Russia’s Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies, and Communication in the Duma, the country’s main legislative body.
Life is getting more complicated for VPN companies that cater to Russian users. The database does not detail what the URLs are, and Google did not reply to WIRED’s request for comment.
Does stopad work as a vpn archive#
Roskomnadzor made more than 12,800 requests for Google to remove URLs under the country’s 2017 “VPN law” between March 13 and March 25, according to the Lumen database, an archive that documents legal requests for the removal of online content. “ Roskomnadzor is reacting very nervously to the rapid growth of the VPN market,” says Mikhail Klimarev, executive director of the Internet Protection Society, a Russian digital rights group. Another provider called Psiphon said its number of daily active users in Russia jumped to more than 1.1 million immediately after Instagram was blocked, before settling at 650,000.īut VPN companies have not escaped Russian censorship. The VPN company Windscribe told WIRED that almost a million people from Russia had signed up since the war started, 20 times the usual rate.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, VPN companies say the number of Russian users has spiked. Almost 400 news websites, 138 finance sites, 93 antiwar sites, and three social media platforms have been blocked, according to .Īs the number of blocked sites grew, huge numbers of Russians turned to VPN companies-which connect users in one country’s censored internet to a server in another country, where there are less restrictions-as bridges out of Moscow’s shrinking internet. Since the start of war in Ukraine on February 24, Russian authorities have tried to turn their country’s internet into an island, severing its ties with the global internet.
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