How to choose a VPN? The main thing about the technology and legality of its use

Roskomnadzor blocks independent media and prohibits social networks - available information on the Internet every day. Just now you don’t even look at Storis - you have to use VPN.

"Paper", together with the system administrator Dmitry Sobolev, answers the main questions about the VPN - its legality and principles of use.

We also tell how to subscribe to the VPN service “Paper” .

How does VPN work ? ↓

VPN (Virtual Private Network - virtual private network) is a technology that creates a safe encrypted Internet connection. In other words, this is a universal way of bypassing locks on the Internet, which also protects your personal data.

Technically, this works like this: a provider, for each user connecting to his network, assigns him an IP address by which the user can be identified-first of all, find out his approximate location. Using the VPN, the user connects to the VPN service server. This server changes the IP address of the user and masks his real location. It turns out that you use the Internet from another country.

Previously, the VPN was used in large business to ensure the security of the company's data and connect remote employees to the internal network. Over time, the technology has spread and is now massively used, among other things, to bypass various locks.

VPN is needed not only to use Facebook and Instagram again, but also to protect their data - according to the Yarovaya Law , operators in Russia are required to store users traffic (including correspondence in social networks and messengers, emails and audio recordings - approx. “ Papers ”), but VPN hides this traffic.

It makes sense to use VPN services when connecting to the Internet through public WiFay-in such networks, attackers can intercept and steal passwords from social networks and banking applications.

Is it legal to use the VPN in Russia ? ↓

A short answer - yes. For an ordinary user, there are no risks in installing and using VPN - this is not prohibited by Russian law.

In a conversation with RBC, the head of the Constitutional Committee of the Federation Council Andrei Klishas emphasized that the VPN users are not threatened with pursuit from the law.

At the same time, since 2017, the Russian authorities have been trying to interfere with the owners of VPN servers in Russia. First, they introduced a law on the ban on their work, which continues to operate now, and in 2019 they tried to oblige them to register in the Roskomnadzor information system (only Kaspersky Secure Connection agreed to these conditions. For refusing registration, services are at risk of fines.

Blocks of individual services began only in 2021. On March 15, 2022, the chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Alexander Hinshtein, announced the blocking of 20 VPN services and noted that Roskomnadzor would continue to limit others. In practice, this task is not easy to implement: many VPN services bypass blocking, masking VPN traffic to a regular one-this is called obstacle.

Once again, we note that these prohibitions do not apply to ordinary users - using the VPN is completely legal.

How to choose and install VPN ? ↓

There are many VPN services for both computers and smartphones. They differ from each other in the geography of the connection (that is, which countries can be used through a particular VPN), the connection speed, traffic volume and encryption protocols.

We recommend using paid services, because free VPN often earn on selling user information. Even paid services have a higher quality of the connection and there are no advertising banners that are found in free applications. If you still decide to download a free service, then you should choose the one that at least on your site claims that it does not sell user data.

When choosing, you should pay attention to the reviews of other users and VPN restrictions. So, services from Germany can limit access when downloading pirate content (we, of course, also do not support the consumption of pirate content).

VPN can be downloaded to a computer from a site or installed as an application on a smartphone via an AppStore or Google Play. It is important to take into account that in March of 2022 the Globalcheck service reported the blocking of these applications stores. Later they earned again, but it is not worth excluding that Roskomnadzor at some point can again block the shops themselves and individual VPN services in them.

As a rule, a subscription to a paid service costs several dollars a month. It is most profitable to buy VPN by long -term subscription - for example, for three months or for a year.

Dmitry Sobolev recommends the following VPN services:

• Paid (most sites are available in Russian): Cyberghost , Expressvpn , Zenmate , Surfshark , Xeovo ;
• Free (some of them are available for paid versions): Betternet , Lantern , Proton VPN , WINDSCRIBE , BROWSEC .

Paper also has its own VPN service. To use it, it is enough to arrange a prenewal for any amount of 100 rubles. You can subscribe to our VPN here .

What else is important to consider when choosing a VPN ? ↓

It is important to remember that any VPN slows down the speed of the Internet - you may have difficulties with downloading large files or watching a video. The more popular the free service, the more its servers are loaded and the worse the connection speed will be.

Some state sites (for example, the “State Services” service) and banking applications may not work through VPN - this is due to the protection of these services from possible attacks. For example, to view the stories on Instagram, you will have to turn on the VPN, and to download a certificate of a criminal record from the “public services” - on the contrary, turn off.

It is likely that many of the VPN services in the future will fall under the blocking of Roskomnadzor and they will take time to solve this problem. In this case, you can switch to another VPN.

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