Russia strengthens its battle against the most used instant messaging applications in the country, such as WhatsApp and Telegram, in a new attempt to control an increasingly restrictive technological sector.
As shared by different media such as Swissinfociting the Russian news agency TASS already EFEthe Interior Ministry of Russia has related both platforms to a greater number of crimes, anticipating its departure from the country.
Always with the figures shared by the Ministry of Interior, during last week on WhatsApp 313 crimes were carried out, while in Telegram the sum amounted to 414 crimes; In turn, it is mentioned that in Max, the courier service, no illegal activity was carried out.
In this way, Everything seems to point to a larger goalsuch as ending the domain of WhatsApp and Telegram in the country, not only with the creation of the recent Max, but also for the accusations of different deputies, such as Antón Gorelkin, who anticipated restrictions on these applications.
Human Rights Organizations such as Human Rights Watch have described the current situation of Russia as one of the worst of the postsoviet era, due to the censorship of what the government qualifies as «extremist», with the blockade of media or applications such as YouTube.
At present, to access this type of services, Russian citizens have to use VPN servicesanother of Putin’s main objectives, like web browsers that are more based on privacy.
In return, Russian alternatives such as the recent Max offer a speech aligned with Kremlin policies, imposing the censorship of independent media, in addition to strict conditions for technological companies such as Apple and Google, to block access to this type of websites.
According to Human Rights Watch, the country’s legislation «has become a powerful information control tool in the hands of the authorities, allowing a more effective, direct and non -transparent state censorship, with the manipulation of traffic without supervision or accountability.»
To the control of VPN services and the censorship of different services, it must also be added that More than half of the country’s IP addresses are in the hands of the 7 main Internet services linked to the Statewhich further complicates censorship.
Through software developed to impose these control regulations, such as Ecosge, Russian authorities can directly automate access to different web pages: if any on the list – periodically actualized – the user will directly see an error message.
Thanks to this control software, the government maintains access to all Internet traffic, through a monitoring and analysis tool, such as Sylorde, in addition to really dangerous functions such as Javascript injection, which allows malicious manipulation of the website code.
At the moment, the approach of the WhatsApp and Telegram prohibition joins a wave of blocking foreign services to which it is accused of breaking the law, such as Instagram, Meta, or more private applications, such as Signal, Session, Discord and Simplex Chat.
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Tags: Russia, Telegram, WhatsApp