Apple starts removing VPN services in Russia at its request

At the request of Russia's Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor), the American corporation Apple has removed several VPN services from the Russian version of the App Store that were used to bypass internet censorship.

Source: Russian online newspaper The Moscow Times

Details: The apps belonging to at least four services have been removed: Proton VPN, Red Shield VPN, Nord VPN and Le VPN.

Red Shield VPN and Le VPN shared the messages they received from Apple. They stated that the apps had been removed from the AppStore at Roskomnadzor's request. The Russian agency claimed they contained "content that is illegal in Russia".

Apple suggested that developers contact Roskomnadzor on their own and clarify the reason. Red Shield representatives recommended that users change their Apple ID country to install the app and receive updates. Blocking of VPN services in Russia began before the full-scale war in Ukraine, but has become more frequent since then.

Roskomnadzor conducted two waves of large-scale blocking of VPN services in August and September last year. They affected the WireGuard, OpenVPN, and IPSec protocols.

Sergei Khutortsev, Director of the Roskomnadzor's Public Communications Network Monitoring and Management Centre, said in October 2023 that 167 "malicious" VPN services and 84 applications had been blocked in two years.

Background: Russia's censorship authority, Roskomnadzor, is planning to start maintaining a register of prohibited information using so-called artificial intelligence.

At the request of Roskomnadzor, telecom operators block an average of about 300,000 unregistered SIM cards per week.

Support UP or become our patron!