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Russia has banned VPNs capable of circumventing website blocking, and will require users of chat apps to have a phone number associated with their accounts:
Vladimir Putin has banned virtual private networks (VPNs) and Tor in a crackdown on apps that allow access to websites prohibited in Russia. The law, signed by Mr Putin, was passed by Russia's parliament last week and will now come into force on 1 November. A second law to ban anonymous use of online messaging services will take effect on 1 January next year.
It would make it easier for the state to snoop on citizens' browsing habits, one internet security expert suggested.
The laws signed by Mr Putin are meant only to block access to "unlawful content" and not target law-abiding web users, the head of the lower house of parliament said, according to the RIA news agency.
One feature of the second law is the provision to require internet operators to restrict users' access if they are found to be distributing illegal content.
Also at Engadget, ZDNet, RT, TechCrunch, and CNET.
Related: Apple Capitulates, Removes Unlicensed VPN Apps From China App Store
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 04 2017, @01:03PM
Good luck blocking Tor. Iran tried it a few years ago; it gave birth to obfsproxy enabled bridges, which essentially use steganography over network channels to make tor traffic look like benign xmpp packets to the deep packet inspection firewall, and that same software should work just fine now in Putin's Russia.
And honestly, I doubt Putin doesn't know this. But this new law sure does put a damper on the vpn industry in Russia, as well as others who were making money via sites banned in Russia. It pushes encrypted anonymized traffic back underground. And I think that's exactly what Vlad wanted. Better to have 50 criminals to keep in check than 50,000.