Translated material
Dozens of popular applications monitor VPN users in Russia
22 of the 30 most popular Russian applications from the RuStore and Google Play stores monitor the operation of VPN services on the device, experts from the RKS Global project found out , The Bell noted .
As determined by project analysts, the use of VPN is, in particular, 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). At least 18 Russian apps send information about VPN use to their servers, from where it can be passed on to security forces upon request.
At the same time, in the background, applications are able to determine not only the operation of the VPN: Yandex Browser can detect the anonymous Tor browser installed on the phone, Samokat and MegaMarket see all VPN services downloaded to the device, and Avito receives information about more than 200 applications on the device.
At the same time, 22 applications from the studied sample run in the background.
According to experts, the only companies that do not detect an enabled VPN are Yandex Market, Yandex Food, Government Services, Yandex Go, Zen, Mail.ru Mail, MegaFon and Mir Pay.
Experts recommend using two phones: one for Russian applications, the second for everything else with a VPN.
Previously, mass shutdowns of the mobile Internet, the network operating on “white lists” - when only those sites that are included in the corresponding list work, and blocking of popular applications led to protest initiatives throughout the country.
Against this background, the Ministry of Digital Development launched a large-scale campaign against VPNs.
Popular services were instructed to monitor VPN connections on users’ devices and transmit this data for subsequent blocking: The Ministry of Digital Development sent methodological recommendations to IT companies on identifying means of bypassing blocking. Domestic platforms were threatened with exclusion from the “white lists”, deprivation of registration with the Ministry of Digital Development, and employees with protection from mobilization if they provide access to users with VPN enabled.
In addition, operators have been instructed to charge users for using VPNs. A source from the BBC Russian Service reported that all this was an initiative of the FSB, and the Ministry of Digital Development itself was against it.
At the end of March, it also became known that the Russian authorities want to expand the system for analyzing and filtering online traffic: by 2030, the Ministry of Digital Development plans to increase the system capacity by 2.5 times, to 954 terabits per second. “This is a really big figure,” explained cyber lawyer Sarkis Darbinyan. “This is a figure that can seriously put pressure on the traffic of the largest platforms.”
As journalists found out, in particular, the youngest son of Russian Presidential Assistant Nikolai Patrushev, the son of FSB Deputy Director Sergei Korolev and FSB Colonel General Andrei Fetisov make money from blocking.
Radio Liberty news release:
Dozens of popular applications monitor VPN users in Russia