Tomsk man sentenced to 3 years of restraint for using a secure messaging app

A court in Russia’s Tomsk has sentenced a man to 3 years of personal restraint for using a “computer programme making it impossible to identify the user, as well as their activities on the Internet unambiguously,” a Habr user cites the court’s press department.

It is known that the man is 31 years old. He was charged with creating, using and disseminating a malevolent computer programme. The press release says he used one such programme on his home PC between 2018 and 2020. The man pleaded guilty.

The users of Habr have found out that the man named Georgy Belous is most possibly the defendant in question. He was using Vipole, a secure messaging service with end-to-end encryption. Belous has been restrained from leaving the city or changing place of residence without an approval by a regulating authority. It is unknown whether the court’s decision was appealed.