Following orders from local authorities, Kaspersky's VPN has begun blocking sites on Russia's national blacklist, which includes many 'pirate' sites. The news follows reports that the country's telecoms watchdog, Roscomnadzor, will not attempt to block VPNs for non-compliance, but will seek to fine them instead.
In order to prevent citizens from accessing objectionable content, from pirate sites through to extremist material, Russia operates a national blacklist. This centralized database of domains, known locally as FGIS (Federal State Information System), is checked by Internet service providers which then block their subscribers from accessing forbidden sites. Of course, services like VPNs, Tor and various anonymizers, are able to circumvent these measures, a point not lost on the authorities. In 2017, a new bill was signed into law aiming to close the loophole. As a result, if tools with the ability to circumvent the blacklist don’t play ball by respecting its contents, they also face being blocked by ISPs.
This proposal came to head earlier this year when telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor wrote to several major VPN providers – NordVPN, ExpressVPN, TorGuard, IPVanish, VPN Unlimited, VyprVPN, Kaspersky Secure Connection, HideMyAss!, Hola VPN, and OpenVPN – demanding compliance. The VPN services above were given 30 days to respond but most either ignored or flat-out rejected the demands. Only Russia-based Kaspersky offered to cooperate and it now appears the security company is censoring websites as ordered.
