22 popular Russian applications monitor whether VPN is enabled on the device

22 of the 30 most popular Russian applications from the RuStore and Google Play stores detect an enabled VPN on the device, experts from the RKS Global project found out , The Bell noted .

18 Russian apps send information about detected VPN use to their servers, from where it can be passed on to security forces upon request.

The use of VPN is monitored by banking services (T-Bank, Sberbank), marketplaces (Wildberries, Ozon, MegaMarket and Samokat), as well as applications from the Yandex ecosystems (Browser, Maps) and VK (VKontakte, Odnoklassniki).

Some of the apps caught scan devices even deeper. Yandex Browser can detect the anonymous Tor browser installed on the phone, Samokat and MegaMarket search for all downloaded VPN services, and Avito receives information about more than 200 applications on the device.

The remaining eight applications, despite being affiliated with the state and belonging to the Yandex structure, do not detect the enabled VPN. Among them are Yandex Market, Yandex Food, Government Services, Yandex Go, Zen, Mail.ru Mail, MegaFon and Mir Pay.

Earlier it became known that the authorities want to oblige Russian online services to monitor VPN connections on users’ devices and transfer this data for subsequent blocking. The Ministry of Digital Development sent methodological recommendations to IT companies on how to identify means of bypassing blocking, and some marketplaces have already begun to block access to clients with VPN enabled.

Experts advised enabling the split tunneling function inside the VPN to disguise the bypass of Russian blocking.

Important Stories found that in March Roskomnadzor demanded Google remove 233 apps to bypass blocking. This is a record since 2024.