The Russian censorship agency Roskomnadzor has ordered 10 VPN service
providers to link their servers in Russia to its network in order to
stop users within the country from reaching banned sites.
VPN service
If they fail to comply, their services will be blocked, according to a
machine translation of the order.The 10 VPN providers are ExpressVPN,
HideMyAss!, Hola VPN, IPVanish, Kaspersky Secure Connection, KeepSolid,
NordVPN, OpenVPN, TorGuard, and VyprVPN.
In response at least five of the 10 – Express VPN, IPVanish, KeepSolid,
NordVPN, TorGuard and – say they are tearing down their servers in
Russia but continuing to offer their services to Russian customers if
they can reach the providers’ servers located outside of Russia. A sixth
provider, Kaspersky Labs, which is based in Moscow, says it will comply
with the order. The other four could not be reached for this article.
IPVanish characterized the order as another phase of “Russia’s
censorship agenda” dating back to 2017 when the government enacted a law
forbidding the use of VPNs to access blocked Web sites.
“Up until recently, however, they had done little to enforce such
rules,” IPVanish says in its blog. “These new demands mark a
significant escalation.”
The reactions of those not complying are similar. TorGuard says it has
taken steps to remove all its physical servers from Russia. It is also
cutting off its business with data centers in the region
“We would like to be clear that this removal of servers was a voluntary
decision by TorGuard management and no equipment seizure occurred,”
TorGuard says in its blog. “We do not store any logs so even if servers
were compromised it would be impossible for customer’s data to be
exposed.”
TorGuard says it is deploying more servers in adjacent countries to protect fast download speeds for customers in the region.
IPVanish says it has faced similar demands from Russia before and
responded similarly. In 2016, a new Russian law required online service
providers to store customers’ private data for a year. “In response, we
removed all physical server presence in Russia, while still offering
Russians encrypted connections via servers outside of Russian borders,”
the company says. “That decision was made in accordance with our strict
zero-logs policy.”When comes to the issue of online privacy and
security, we suggest to use a VPN, and our recommendation is
RitaVPN.Qwer432
www.ritavpn.com/blog/how-to-watch-english-premier-league-football-online-from-any-location/ www.ritavpn.com/blog/wifi-password-hacker-cause-data-leakage/ www.ritavpn.com/blog/3-things-activists-can-do-to-strengthen-their-privacy-and-security-on-the-internet/
The Wall