home Chimneys Is there a fine for VPN in Russia? What is the punishment for anonymizers? What does the ban on anonymizers and VPNs mean for the average user? Will there be a ban on corporate VPNs?

Is there a fine for VPN in Russia? What is the punishment for anonymizers? What does the ban on anonymizers and VPNs mean for the average user? Will there be a ban on corporate VPNs?

The use of means in Russia to bypass blocks to access prohibited sites will be prosecuted by law from November 1. We discuss what VPNs and anonymizers are and what threatens those who decide to pretend that they have not heard about the new law in the “Q&A” section.

What are anonymizers?

Anonymizers are special sites (proxy servers) that act as an intermediary between you and the resource you want to visit. But at the same time, they will not be able to track your real IP address on the site, since you are visiting them on behalf of the IP address of the web proxy. An anonymizer has a narrower scope than a VPN, but their operating principles are similar.

What is a VPN?

VPN is a virtual private network, in simple words, is a technology that provides secure logical network communication over a private or public network when high-speed Internet is available. Moreover, all information transmitted internally is reliably protected by encryption algorithms that form secure tunnels. Unlike a regular network, a VPN connection makes the transmitted information inaccessible from the outside and protects it from illegal use.

So, now you can’t use VPN services and anonymizers?

Federal Law No. 276 "On Amendments to the Law "On Information, information technology and on the protection of information" does not prohibit the use of VPN services and anonymizers. The point is only that with their help it will no longer be possible to visit prohibited sites.

Owners of information and telecommunication networks and information resources through which access to sites prohibited in Russia are provided are prohibited from providing opportunities for viewing them. The display by search engines of links to blocked Internet resources is now also illegal; first of all, the ban applies to resources with pornographic and extremist content.

Thus, Russia intends to use the law to combat the spread of extremist materials and other prohibited information.

Who will monitor this and how?

Control is entrusted to Roskomnadzor. The Committee will create and maintain a federal state information system (FSIS), which will contain a black list of prohibited resources. At the same time, the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs will have the authority to find services that help gain access to sites blocked in Russia.

When contacted by law enforcement agencies, Roskomnadzor will identify a provider that allows the use of anonymizers. He will be notified electronically of the need to provide data that will allow him to identify the owner of the anonymizer. The provider will have three days to provide the relevant information, TASS reports.

After this, Roskomnadzor will send the anonymizer a requirement to connect to FSIS. The resource will have to join the system in 30 days. Internet search engines operating in Russia will also be required to connect to FSIS at the request of the department.

After fulfilling the first requirement, anonymizers are given only three days to ensure compliance with the ban on providing the ability to use programs and other technical means in Russia to gain access to prohibited sites, and search engines are given the opportunity to stop issuing links to them. In case of refusal, such services will be blocked.

Can my home Internet be blocked if I search for a blocked site?

No. The law, which comes into force on November 1, 2017, does not contain grounds for blocking the home Internet when searching for prohibited sites.

The provisions of the new law will not apply to operators of state information systems, government agencies and authorities local government, as well as in cases of using anonymizers, provided that the circle of their users is pre-determined by the owners and their use occurs for “technological purposes to support the activities of the person carrying out the use.”

The law does not impose additional prohibitions, since we are talking about sites that are already blocked in Russia.

The law on restrictions for anonymizers and VPN services, obliging them to block sites banned in Russia, has been in force for three months. However, no service yet implements it.

Photo: Safron Golikov / Kommersant

As a representative of the press service of Roskomnadzor told RBC, to date the agency has not sent a request to any VPN service or anonymizer to block users’ access to sites that are included in the register of prohibited information.

The provisions of the law, according to which services for bypassing Internet blocking, including VPNs and anonymizers, are required to limit user access to sites prohibited in Russia, came into force on November 1, 2017. However, which service must obey the law is chosen by federal Service security (FSB) or other body carrying out operational investigative activities and ensuring the security of Russia. At the initiative of law enforcement officers, Roskomnadzor should send anonymizers a request to connect to the Federal State Information System (FSIS), which contains information about prohibited sites, and block access to these resources. If the anonymizer does not connect to FSIS within 30 days of receiving the request from Roskomnadzor, it will be blocked itself.

“As of today, there have been requests from participants in operational investigative activities. — RBC) and there were no state security reports regarding anonymizers and VPN services,” a Roskomnadzor representative told RBC.

Schrödinger's Law

Experts said even at the stage of its adoption that the law might not work. “Roskomnadzor does not have leverage over most VPN services, and they also cannot block them for non-compliance with the law, since Roskomnadzor does not have the resources ready for this.” technical solutions, and the law has not yet appeared the corresponding regulations. Russia will not be able to copy the Chinese model of fighting VPN because of its high cost and the radically different topology of the Russian segment of the Internet,” says Karen Kazaryan, an analyst at the Russian Association of Electronic Communications (RAEC). In his opinion, about a quarter of Internet users in Russia use VPN services and anonymizers, and their number is constantly growing.

Only some anonymizers with Russian roots, such as 2ip and Chameleon, publicly declared their readiness to comply with this law, while representatives of most foreign services initially reported that they would not comply with the requirements of Russian legislation, and continue to adhere to this position. “As a company focused on protecting privacy and freedom of information on the Internet, we will continue to support users without any censorship or blocking, no matter where they are,” a representative of the American VPN service ExpressVPN told RBC.

A representative of another foreign service, PrivateVPN, said that since the company is not present in Russia, the country’s laws do not apply to it. The company has a server in Russia, but it is ready to give it up if someone forces it to do so. “We have always supported freedom of speech and the right to free access to information and privacy on the Internet, and we condemn any actions aimed at restricting these rights in Russia or any other country,” said a representative of the CactusVPN service.

Friend or foe

Another feature that may make the application of the law difficult is the widespread use of VPN technology in corporate networks for work needs. Thus, Internet Ombudsman Dmitry Marinichev, the previously adopted bill was “crazy” and doubted the possibility of its implementation due to the inability to distinguish which VPNs operate for commercial purposes and which ones are used to bypass Internet blocking.

The Association of European Businesses (AEB), which includes Air France, Citibank, Volvo Cars, Deutsche Bank, Nokia and several hundred other European companies, also adopted this law at the end of October 2017, since many companies use VPN in corporate networks.

According to Roskomsvoboda project lawyer Sarkis Darbinyan, Roskomnadzor has not yet prepared by-laws with information on how personal and corporate VPN services differ. “The law says that it does not apply to corporate VPN networks, but there is no way yet to distinguish them from services used for personal needs. It is possible that the first lockdowns will ultimately affect the commercial and banking sectors,” Darbinyan said.

07/31/2017, Mon, 09:24, Moscow time

The President of Russia signed a law banning anonymizers and VPN technologies that allow access to sites banned in the country. Another law requires mandatory identification of messenger users by phone number.

Roskomnadzor will block anonymizers

President of Russia Vladimir Putin signed a law amending the Federal Law “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection.” The amendments outlaw technologies that allow one to bypass the blocking of certain resources (anonymizers) and VPN services. Roskomnadzor is ordered to restrict access not only to the anonymizers themselves, but also to those sites that contain instructions on how to bypass blocking.

Links to such resources will be blocked by search engine operators after being included in a special list of Roskomnadzor: the agency is creating a federal state register of information resources and information and telecommunication networks, access to which is limited within the country. In case of non-compliance with the requirements of the law, search engines, however, the amount of fines has not yet been determined.

The law was adopted by the State Duma on July 21 (373 votes in favor, with two opponents and two abstentions) and approved by the Federation Council four more days later. The document has already been published on the portal legal information and came into force.

Duma members supported the law on blocking anonymizers almost unanimously

This is the same law of the so-called “blogger register”. From August 1, 2014, sites that were visited by more than 3 thousand users per day were included in a special register of Roskomnadzor and, in fact, were equated to media. This practice has now been abolished; the Duma called it “lost its meaning.”

Messenger users are identified by phone number

Another law signed by the president concerns the regulation of instant messengers. The main requirement for their owners is to enter user identification by phone number. If this condition is not met, messengers may refuse to send messages to users. Behind the identification process there will be contracts that messengers must conclude with telecom operators. But the applications behind which are Russian legal entities are exempt from concluding such an agreement and can determine the subscriber number independently.

The law also obliges instant messengers to limit the dissemination of prohibited information and provide the opportunity for government authorities to notify users of emergencies or threats.

If the conditions listed in the law are not met, the state may limit access to the messenger. The document comes into force on January 1, 2018.

Background

The laws signed by the president previously caused a serious resonance in Russian society. On July 23, opponents of the adoption of the documents held a march along Strastnoy Boulevard, coordinated with the authorities, “For a free Internet”; according to various estimates, from 800 to 4 thousand people took part in it.

According to some media reports, the head of the FSB insisted on the imminent adoption of a law on blocking anonymizers Alexander Bortnikov. The official initiators of the project were Alexander Yushchenko(CPRF), Nikolay Ryzhak(faction “A Just Russia”) and Maxim Kudryavtsev("United Russia").

Project coordinator "Roskomsvoboda" Artem Kozlyuk in an interview with CNews on the reality of fulfilling the requirements of the law on anonymizers: “The variety of means of bypassing blocking is too great, and we are talking not only about anonymizers working through a web browser, but also about services that use a variety of software,” said Artem Kozlyuk. - The experience of China shows that blocking all of them is unrealistic. In addition, services that are blocked in Russia will look for various workarounds for their Russian users.”

Experts cite the conflict between the FSB and Roskomnadzor on the one hand and Telegram on the other as the reason for drawing up the law on instant messengers. The formal reason was information that the organizers of the terrorist attack in the St. Petersburg metro on April 3 used this application for communication. Roskomnadzor

Illustration copyright Silas Stein/DPA/TASS Image caption Owners of VPN services and “anonymizers” are required to block access to prohibited sites

In Russia, on November 1, a law came into force obliging owners of VPN services and so-called anonymizers to block access to prohibited sites.

The new law affects all known tools for bypassing blocks and achieving anonymity on the Internet, including browser extensions and the anonymous Tor browser. President Vladimir Putin signed a package of amendments in July 2017.

“In Russia there are 25-30 proxy and VPN services that are popular among the population. Among them are cameleo.ru, 2ip.ru and others. They all expressed their readiness to comply with the law,” the head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, told RBC.

At the same time, he admitted that there are still hundreds of thousands of small VPN services, which are much more difficult to block. “But the law is focused primarily on the services that are most popular among citizens,” Zharov noted.

Many users fear that the ban will tighten Internet censorship in Russia. The human rights organization Amnesty International said after the law was signed that the amendments were a “serious blow to Internet freedom” in Russia.

How will the new ban work?

To implement the amendments, the Federal State Information System (FSIS) is being launched in Russia. At the request of the police, Roskomnadzor will identify providers that provide access to VPN services and anonymizers.

Providers will be required to connect to FSIS and provide information about the owner of the anonymizer, who will also be required to connect to the system. After this, the owner of the service will be required to block access to sites included in the list of prohibited sites. If the owner refuses, the anonymizer will be blocked.

Foreign VPN provider leaves Russia due to the Yarovaya package

The amendments also include restrictions for search engines. If services show links to sites from the list of prohibited sites, they will be fined.

Are anonymizer owners ready for the new law?

Roskomnadzor reported on October 31 that the regulator was completing testing of the system for interaction with anonymizer owners.

In preparation for the ban coming into force, Roskomnadzor employees met with market participants and explained how the amendments would work.

“In general, the testing was successful. The following took part in it: Kaspersky Lab, Opera Software AS, Cameleo, 2ip, Mail.ru, Yandex, Sputnik,” the department told the BBC. “Testing involved connecting to FSIS ( to obtain a list of blocked Internet resources), including in an automated mode, as well as launching a filtering mechanism for users of blocked sites."

Will Tor be blocked?

Roskomnadzor will not be able to completely block access to Tor. This browser uses not only open network addresses, but also closed ones, which are almost impossible to block. Tor issues them upon user request.

Belarus is trying to block Tor. As of December 2016, censors had blacklisted about 6,000 of the 7,000 public Tor addresses operating around the world.

The number of users of non-public network addresses in this country after the start of blocking increased from 250 people to 3 thousand people, European Radio for Belarus reported. At the same time, the number of users of public addresses fell from 3 thousand to 2.6 thousand people.

What side effects may there be?

The Association of European Businesses warned in October that the new ban could include corporate VPN services used for production purposes.

The ban does not apply to such VPN services, but experts note that it is impossible to distinguish a corporate network from a public one.

It is also unclear how the law will work in the case of Google and Apple, whose stores sell third-party VPN services. The head of the Roskomsvoboda project, Artem Kozlyuk, said earlier that Roskomnadzor is trying to negotiate with Google and Apple so that they remove such services from their stores.

Roskomnadzor told the BBC that they do not experience any difficulties in working with Google and Apple. “We have been cooperating for a long time in terms of removing illegal applications from these stores,” the regulator noted.

What's wrong with Crimea?

The ban on anonymizers will adversely affect the residents of Crimea and Sevastopol, warned ROCIT CEO Sergei Grebennikov. On the peninsula, due to sanctions, the services of some Internet companies are unavailable.

For example, many Google, Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal services do not work in Crimea. Residents of the peninsula gained access to them through anonymizers and VPNs.

“Half of the residents of Crimea now use VPN services, because many sites are inaccessible to them due to sanctions, and the introduction of this law may for some time leave the residents of Crimea without the services that they are accustomed to using on a daily basis,” said Grebennikov at a State Duma meeting in June.

“Crimes are committed not on the Internet, but offline, and the Internet serves only as a method. It is necessary to catch criminals offline. The bans that are proposed to be introduced will lead to the development of the Darknet, that is, we continue to fight windmills,” noted General Director of ROCIT.

In the current version of the law, no exceptions have been made for citizens, Sergei Grebennikov told the BBC Russian Service. “Thus, the only option for them is to use a corporate VPN or buy and configure the service themselves,” the expert added.

Roskomnadzor noted in this regard that the amendments do not prohibit VPN services and anonymizers, but simply oblige their owners to block access to blocked resources.

On November 1, a law banning bypassing blocks using VPNs and anonymizers comes into force in Russia. According to legislators, this should completely block Russians from accessing prohibited sites. We are talking about resources from the Roskomnadzor register that were blocked for promoting extremism, copyright violations, etc. How the new law will work and how successful this practice is abroad is in the RT material.

Amendments to the federal law “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection” have come into force in Russia. They are aimed at combating methods of bypassing sites blocked in Russia. The bill was initiated by State Duma deputies from three factions: United Russia, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and A Just Russia.

We are not talking about a complete ban on technologies and services that will allow you to visit sites blocked in Russia. The updated law only stipulates that Internet services should not provide access to them. If any of them continue to help circumvent prohibitions, they may be blocked.

Information about the owners and location of services will be collected by providers. The implementation of the law will be monitored by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB.

Opportunities for bypassing blocking can be provided by VPN technologies, anonymizers, proxy services, anonymous networks (colloquially called the “darknet”) and special browser extensions. Owners of such services will have access to Roskomnadzor’s register of prohibited sites in order to limit these opportunities. If they do not introduce restrictions, the department will send them a notice. And only if this notification is ignored will the service itself and its servers be blocked.

The operating technologies of services that may be banned vary. But they are all based on the principles of decentralization and anonymity, and also require the installation of additional software. Thanks to these technologies, the user connects to the server, through which he accesses the blocked resource from a “foreign” IP address.

In addition, some of these services provide access to resources that are not available from the “regular” network. In particular, software Tor provides access to a real “parallel” Internet, which is not subject to external regulation by providers or the state.

This opens up opportunities for attackers not only to bypass existing blocks, but also for criminal activities: fraudulent transactions, drug trafficking, child pornography, weapons, etc.

While Roskomnadzor is unlikely to have any problems with anonymizers and VPNs located in Russia, similar services located abroad may refuse to comply with the instructions of the Russian agency, because they are not afraid of blocking in Russia. And the developers of Tor directly proclaim anonymity as their principle, so you should not expect cooperation from government agencies on their part.

In addition to working with providers and service owners, the new law will also affect search engines that operate in Russia. They will be required to remove from search results resources and software that allow access to blocked resources. If they refuse, they will also be blocked. And from services Google Play and the App Store will remove software to circumvent prohibitions - this new law also allows you to do this.

On October 31, Roskomnadzor announced that testing of a system that allows VPN owners and anonymizers to block access to sites banned in Russia has already been completed. A number of people took part in the testing Russian companies: Yandex, Kaspersky Lab, Opera Software AS and Mail.Ru Group.

Kaspersky Lab responded to RT’s request for test results. According to company representatives, the functions of Kaspersky Lab security solutions distributed in the Russian Federation are fully compliant and will comply with the laws of the country.

“So, in accordance with changes in Russian legislation coming into force on November 1, 2017, access to sites included in the register of prohibited sites will be impossible from this day forward using programs containing the VPN function,” the company emphasized.

They noted that the law prohibits access to certain sites via VPN, but not the technology or service itself. A number of Kaspersky Lab programs contain a VPN function. The company recommends using it to ensure confidentiality and protection against data interception, for example, when using open Wi-Fi networks in cafes, airports or hotels.

Blocking Internet resources is used as a restrictive measure in many countries around the world, but few have experience in combating methods to bypass them. The most famous is the Chinese experience.

The PRC blocks a huge number of sites, including such widespread ones as Youtube, Twitter and Facebook. The Chinese experience of blocking was called the “Great Firewall of China” - by analogy with the Great Wall of China.

In order to prevent its citizens from accessing blocked sites, the PRC is actively fighting against online anonymity services. And this experience has been quite successful: in the country, new services that provide access to VPN are constantly blocked, the capabilities of Tor are seriously limited, and work in this direction is ongoing.

However, even a serious and long-term Chinese approach does not give one hundred percent results, and the Chinese continue to use services to ensure anonymity. But Chinese residents face serious problems, and those who want to visit blocked sites have to overcome significant difficulties.

Russia’s closest neighbors also have experience in combating bypassing blocking systems. In 2015, a similar law was adopted in Belarus. The first active attempts to implement it in the country began at the end of 2016 with Tor blocking. The number of Belarusian Tor users then fell by almost half.

And here is Roskomsvoboda’s version:

On November 1, 2017, a law came into force in the Russian Federation that strictly regulates the activities of VPN services, anonymizers and search engines in terms of providing users with free access to information.

On the eve of the entry into force of the new Federal Law 276-FZ, which makes appropriate amendments to the Law “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection” in terms of prohibiting bypassing blocking, Roskomnadzor reminded owners of VPNs, anonymizers and search engine operators of their new responsibilities for restricting access to prohibited information:

“The implementation of the new norms of the Federal Law is carried out on the basis of an application to Roskomnadzor from the federal executive body carrying out operational investigative activities or ensuring security Russian Federation, i.e. Ministry of Internal Affairs and FSB.

The responsibilities of VPN service owners and “anonymizers” include restricting access to Internet resources prohibited in the Russian Federation. This rule also applies to search engine operators.

The requirements of the law do not apply to operators of state information systems, government bodies and local governments, as well as cases of using “anonymizers” and VPN services, provided that the circle of users is pre-determined by their owners and the use of such software is carried out for technological purposes to support the activities of the person using them, for example, in banking.”

Roskomnadzor is creating a Register containing a list of resources to which access is limited, and its operation by anonymizers, VPN services and search engine operators, and also approves the procedure for monitoring the implementation of the law. If a case of non-compliance with obligations is detected, the supervisory authority may make a decision to restrict access to an information resource belonging to the owner of the anonymizer and (or) VPN service.

Roskomnadzor also reports that in preparation for the entry into force of the new requirements, it initiated and held several meetings with market participants, during which they were explained the new norms and legal requirements, the features of their application in relation to different types services. “At the moment, Roskomnadzor specialists, together with market participants, are completing testing of a new interaction system. Kaspersky Lab JSC, Opera Software AS, Mail.RU and Yandex are taking part in the testing. Rambler, Sputnik and anonymizers cameleo.ru, 2ip.ru, 2ip.io confirmed their readiness to participate in testing. The total audience of these services in the Russian Federation is about 10 million people,” the department reports.

Let us recall that in early October it became known about the creation of the FSUE Main Radio Frequency Center (GRFC), which is now responsible for the functioning of the “Inspector” blocking control system, which is studying the possibilities of restricting access for various Internet services of a special department, on the basis of the enterprise subordinate to Roskomnadzor. The new department was formed in connection with the entry into force of new regulations on Internet regulation, in particular 276-FZ, which obliges anonymizers and VPN services to filter traffic and not provide users with access to blocked sites. If these services themselves do not comply with the law, then access to them should be limited, which is why GRCHTS employees are training to block anonymizers with VPNs, too.

Recently, the Association of European Businesses, which includes Air France, Citibank, Volvo Cars, expressed concern about the entry into force of the “law on VPN and anonymizers” in Russia. In a letter sent to the head of the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications, Nikolai Nikiforov, and the head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, European businessmen expressed concern that with an expanded interpretation of the law, its norms could be applied to corporate IT systems. The anonymizers affected by the law “use technologies such as private virtual networks(VPN), proxy servers and so on,” however, these technologies are also used by the vast majority of international companies in Russia as one of the measures information security(to protect data transmission channels) when doing business. As mentioned above, Roskomnadzor “reassured” representatives of European business - their activities will not be affected by this law.

According to the deputy head of the computer forensics laboratory from Group-IB, Sergei Nikitin, bypassing blocking is not the main purpose of a VPN, moreover, the law does not directly talk about banning such services, and it only talks about the need for VPN operators to block those sites listed by Roskomnadzor to the register of those prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation.

“It’s unlikely that a business uses a VPN to access blocked resources,” says Nikitin. - Rather, we are talking about our own business processes that do not fall under this law. It may be more difficult to purchase and use public VPN services individuals, But no one will interfere with setting up your server and organizing a VPN for it».

But here one unpleasant thing arises - the State Duma is currently considering a bill on fines for owners of VPN, Proxy services, anonymizers and search engines for failure to comply with the requirements of 276-FZ. True, responsibility is distributed unevenly among search engines and anonymizers. Search engines will be punished with large fines for issuing links to services to bypass blocking, and owners of VPNs, anonymizers and proxying tools will be punished for failure to provide data about themselves in accordance with Federal Law 97-FZ “on organizers of the dissemination of information”: from 10 to 30 thousand rubles - for citizens and from 50 to 300 thousand rubles.

That is, for the very provision of the ability to bypass blocking to anonymizers, no liability is provided, but for the lack of information about the owner in the FSB and Roskomnadzor, such liability may soon be introduced. At the moment, the bill has already passed the first reading in the State Duma. Since the FSB will be responsible for monitoring services that violate Russian legislation in terms of bypassing blocking, Russian “raisers of their VPN” find themselves unprotected before the authorities, which cannot be said about foreign services.

As mentioned above, some companies have begun to cooperate with Roskomnadzor, and their list includes completely unexpected services - like Opera VPN, which previously served many Russian and, more recently, Ukrainian users faithfully in the honorable task of bypassing government Internet blocks. However, in each individual case it will be necessary to look at the development of relations between Internet services and Russian authorities before drawing any conclusions.

According to Roskomnadzor, Kaspersky Lab is already testing a system for interacting with the agency under the new law. The company said that the company's services, including its VPN project, "are and will remain fully compliant with the laws of the country that have come into force."

The Opera browser developer company was also on the list of organizations that are already collaborating with Roskomnadzor. The company itself did not answer whether Opera VPN will comply with the law.

The anonymizers Cameleo.ru, 2ip.ru or 2ip.io also confirmed their readiness to test the system for cooperation with Roskomnadzor.

Undecided or did not answer:

Hidemy.name. The company’s website (then called hideme.ru) was already blocked by Roskomnadzor at the beginning of 2017 due to the presence of an anonymizer line on the main page (then the blocking was challenged with the help of lawyers). Representatives of the service said that the department asked to introduce a ban on visiting sites blocked in Russia in the VPN service. The new law contains exactly the same requirement. In response to a request on October 30, company representatives said they would refrain from commenting;
Cyberghost stated that the new rules go against the very idea of VPN services, but did not officially announce how it would act in this situation. Cyberghost has not yet commented on the situation with cooperation in accordance with Federal Law 276;
The Vemeo service did not officially announce its position and did not answer journalists’ questions.

Not ready to cooperate with Roskomnadzor:

Tunnelbear support says that the service is owned by a Canadian company and is subject to local laws. “We do not have servers in Russia and our terms of service remain unchanged,” they said;
VPN service Zenmate announced that it is not going to comply with the demands of the Russian authorities. “We have developed an elegant solution to detect such cases and automatically switch to “sustainable mode” without causing significant inconvenience to users. In this mode, the connection will be redirected through the largest backbone Internet services. These services play a key role for the network, and therefore blocking them paralyzes the Internet,” the company said;
ExpressVPN. In August 2017, representatives of the service reported that they were not going to reduce the capabilities of the service. They did not respond to a request in October 2017;
TgVPN. A team of developers led by Newcaster.TV co-founder Vladislav Zdolnikov launched the TgVPN VPN service in June 2017. It can be purchased using a bot inside Telegram, as well as on the VPNlove.me website.

Zdolnikov recently announced that the project team is preparing a service designed to work in new legal conditions:

“We understand well how the mechanisms for blocking resources in Russia work, what capabilities Roskomnadzor has in technical terms. Now we are making VPN applications under a new brand with an emphasis on performance in Russia under the conditions of the VPN ban and we will position the service that way.

By the way, free VPN services are not particularly interested in this, because the costs of working in such conditions are no longer recouped due to the nature of the business model.

We will also fight for the functionality of the service in its current concept - VPN with interaction through a bot in Telegram.
Concerning legal side“In case of blocking, most likely we will appeal it in court, right up to the ECHR.”

The network has already responded to the entry into force of 276-FZ, and in many popular telegram channels, on Twitter and others in social networks There is a dense stream of publications about how to protect yourself in case of the introduction of “blocking against bypassing blocking”. Although not everyone believes in the effectiveness of the initiative launched by the authorities, many still advise installing trustworthy VPN services now.

In particular, popular Telegram channels once again posted a July interview with technical director of RosKomSvoboda Stanislav Shakirov about why anonymizers are needed, why they are banned, and which VPN services can be trusted. The questions raised by Stanislav not only remained relevant, but in the current situation they became even more acute, and although he also does not imagine a complete blocking of VPN services, “It is technically impossible to ban VPN as a technology. To completely limit it in the country, it is necessary to cut off all unidentified traffic - even China does not do this,” he still advises using proven services offered by the RosKomSvoboda project VPNlove.me. It is worth noting that among the services that flatly refused to cooperate with the Russian authorities is one of our partners, ExpressVPN. But this does not mean that only this service will respect the confidentiality of its users, and also guarantee complete security of Internet access - all of our partners in the VPNlove.me project are worthy of trust and respect.

But many experts consider the idea of regulating anonymizers and search engines to be “pure madness,” not only because many users will have time to prepare for the introduction of new restrictions and stock up on certain means of bypassing blocking. Executive Director of the Association of Internet Publications Vladimir Kharitonov believes that

“The law either won’t work, or it will work, but not at all in the way that legislators and interested intelligence chiefs would like. …VPN services, anonymizers, proxy servers, decentralized networks are not just many, but very many. So many that intelligence agencies are unlikely to be able to figure everything out. There will always be a service that is not closed yet.”

In addition, services that care about fulfilling obligations to their clients (as is already happening in China - VPN services have already promised to provide services to their clients at any cost), “are unlikely to passively observe the attempts of Roskomnadzor, and will help users circumvent blocking." Telegram developers have already done this; back in the summer, they included a menu in the program settings with alternative access to their Network through proxy servers, notes Kharitonov.

The Tor network uses other mechanisms, but they will be effective even if Roskomnadzor blocks all current Tor servers. “Actually, this is the Internet. This is how it works, says the expert. - But that’s not all. Even if conscientious and obedient users knock on the doors of Lubyanka so hard that the life of users becomes completely unbearable, they will still have the easiest option to bypass the VPN ban - to create their own. If now it may not be too easy without knowledge necessary programs, then when needed, kits for craftsmen “Your VPN! Without SMS, FSB and RKN,” and good handymen will set up a VPN for you at home for a reasonable fee.”

Moreover, he is sure that such a private VPN will not be easy to figure out. To do this, providers will have to purchase equipment worth tens of millions of dollars, and at their own expense, and this does not count the costs of the “Yarovaya package”. And in China, which the authorities often point to as a successful example of filtering, VPN works despite blocking - 31% of the traffic that China exchanges with the rest of the world goes through VPN.

Kharitonov’s words are confirmed by other experts who believe that the fight against VPNs is an even more complex process than blocking anonymizer sites, when one blocked one is replaced by a dozen new ones. In order to block it, you need special expensive equipment for deep analysis user traffic.

Without such tools, DPI equipment (deep packet inspection), it is simply impossible to fully implement the adopted law. Roskomnadzor itself came to a similar conclusion at the end of September, demanding that providers install it.

However, the department’s requirements, due to their high cost, are unfeasible for many small providers and will lead to their withdrawal from the market, warns the Association of Electronic Communications (RAEC). The experts outlined their arguments in detail in a letter to the head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, and the Minister of Communications, Nikolai Nikiforov.

“Given the current cost of equipment for such an analysis, the consequence of virtually no alternative approach will be the need to sell small and medium-sized operator businesses to large telecom operators at a low price,” the RAEC says in its conclusion.

According to estimates by the Internet Research Institute (IRI), in general, the development and implementation of DPI will require about $5 billion, and maintaining the system will cost another $1 billion per year. Small providers simply do not have the funds to purchase special technical means. There are about 1,000 such operators (up to 3 thousand subscribers) in Russia. According to the executive director of the Internet Protection Society, Mikhail Klimarev, minimum cost DPI equipment - about 200 thousand rubles. If the provider refuses to install, they will face fines, license revocation and withdrawal from the market.

“It seems that 200 thousand is not much, but if you calculate the economy, you will find out the following: with an average monthly payment for services of 300 rubles, the annual revenue of such an operator will be approximately 10.8 million. And the profitability of such a business is about 5%, that is, the profit per year is 500 thousand rubles, not counting interest on bank loans and other things. It turns out that the operator will be forced to give up half of the annual profit on equipment that is useless to him, which also worsens the quality of services,” explains Klimarev.

According to Irina Levova, director of strategic projects at III, “at such prices, small operators will have to buy the service from higher-level operators.” However, for these services you will have to pay a considerable amount, often comparable to the implementation of your own equipment.

High cost is not the only problem with DPI equipment: its installation will also lead to a sharp deterioration in communication quality. According to experts, access speeds may drop by almost 20%.

“Imagine that on the path of traffic (IP packets) you put another device that processes each packet sent and makes a decision to “pass/not pass.” This requires appropriate computing power, and the algorithm processing itself reduces the data transfer rate. Thus, DPI will reduce such important indicators of communication quality as “latencies”, “jitter”, and inevitable packet processing errors at DPI lead to increased packet losses. These are not unfounded statements - these are many years of research using the example of the “big Chinese firewall”, where all these indicators are at least ten times worse compared to Hong Kong,” says Mikhail Klimarev.

Based on everything stated above, the country is again faced with another adventure at the level of the “Yarovaya package,” which is both a shame to refuse and impossible to implement (and even useless). An attempt to put everything under total control once again turns into truly astronomical costs, as well as technical problems that could return the entire Internet in Russia “to modem speed.” In the current situation, RosKomSvoboda predicts that the enforcement of federal law 276-FZ, which has entered into force, will, as always, be carried out in “manual mode” - by order from above or in a random mode, checks and fines will rain down on certain search engines and VPNs, someone will get caught to be blocked immediately, as happened with LinkedIn and Zello, and someone will be permanently stressed out, as is happening now