Russian companies are reportedly being forced to participate in a crackdown on VPN users as the Kremlin seeks to limit internet access. Major banks and platforms are collecting data on individuals using VPNs to bypass online restrictions.
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Major Russian companies have been conscripted into a “witch-hunt” against users trying to circumvent online controls, researchers have said, as the Kremlin continues trying to cut its citizens off from the global internet.
Banks and web platforms are collecting data on users of virtual private networks (VPN) tools, which obscure an individual’s real location and allow them to access sites blocked in Russia, according to an investigation by RKS global, an advocacy group for internet freedoms.
Tens of millions of Russians use VPNs to access the global internet. This number grew dramatically at the outset of their country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, after the Kremlin introduced sweeping bans of platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Authorities are now taking far greater measures to track these users, who may be at risk of criminal penalties, the researchers said.
The investigation analysed 30 popular Russian apps, including those run by T-Bank, Sberbank, the search engine site Yandex and the social media platform VKontakte.
It found that 22 of these apps actively detected whether a user was on a VPN – or had one installed on their phone – and most of them retained that data in their servers, where it could be accessed by security services.
“The level of intrusion into the device can be very high,” said RKS global. “Any Android app released by Russian companies for the Russian market may now be spying.”
VPNs, which to conceal the location of a user, have become an aggravating factor in criminal cases in Russia. Photograph: Vladyslav Yushynov/Alamy
Mazay Banzaev, founder of Amnezia, an open-source VPN company, said: “It’s one thing if Russian IT companies were to ‘catch’ users the moment they visit a site with a VPN enabled. It is quite another when even a closed application continues scanning the phone for VPN usage.”
Russian companies are collecting data on users of VPN tools as part of a government-led initiative to track and penalize those circumventing online controls.
Tens of millions of Russians use VPNs, a number that surged after the Kremlin imposed bans on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
VPN users in Russia may face criminal penalties as authorities intensify efforts to monitor and control internet access.
The investigation identified major Russian apps and companies, including T-Bank, Sberbank, Yandex, and VKontakte, as participants in the data collection efforts.
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For millions of Russians, this means that their options to interact with the rest of the world are narrowing – and growing increasingly fraught with risk. It is not formally illegal in Russia to use a VPN and businesses and state agencies still rely on them.
But activities around VPN use are increasingly criminalised. This year, Russian courts have begun to treat VPN use as an aggravating circumstance in prosecutions.
Over the past year, the authorities have embarked on a sgradual effort to throttle the global internet. This began with blackouts of mobile networks across large swathes of the country last year. These spread to Moscow and St Petersburg and Russians started to buy paper maps and pagers to get around and communicate.
Beginning in March, authorities began to block Telegram, a messaging app essential to communication and daily life in Russia. The goal appears to be to push most Russians on to a government-controlled “superapp,” called Max, which is believed to have broad surveillance capabilities. This has been aggressively promoted, leaving many with no option but to install it.
A full-scale web shutdown, like the one employed by Iran, is far more difficult for Russia to achieve because its internet is set up differently.
Instead, the Kremlin has taken a piecemeal and indirect approach to cutting off the population – for example in saying that widespread mobile restrictions in the provinces were necessary to counter Ukrainian drones.
This new regime of data gathering and app-mediated surveillance marks a transition from passive to active censorship and means that little of Russians’ private lives will be out of reach of authorities, said RKS Global. “Digital censorship in Russia is reaching a new level.”
VKontakte, T-Bank, Sberbank and Yandex were approached for comment.