The president Russias, Vladimir Putin, signed a law that effectively bans anonymous web surfing in his country.
In fact, effective November 1st, it bans its forms technology which allow anonymous access to banned websites in Russia. This prohibition covers services that allow people to use the Internet anonymously, such as virtual private networks (VCPNs) and proxies, and forces Internet service providers to block websites that host these services.
Leonid Levin, Russian chairman of the parliamentary committee on information and communication policy, told the news agency RIA Novosti that the law 'includes only the restriction of access to information already prohibited by law or by a judicial decision'.
The blacklist of Russian websites, which was introduced in 2012, was originally intended to be applied to websites that contained illegal drugs, child pornography, and suicides, but in 2013 it was extended to any content suspected of being "extremist." The amendment allows for flexible interpretation, and allows Russia to ban any material that criticizes the views of the current governor or appears to weaken the government's power.
2015, for example, Russia banned briefly Reddit and Wikipedia along with pages that have content for drug use. At that time, Nikolay Kononov, editor-in-chief of DigitalMag.ru, said that these moves were less relevant to the content of the web pages and more were done to show that they can ban what they want, whenever they want. It's a show of intimidation. "
Russia is not the only country that banned tools for anonymity Web surfing, such as VPNs. This month China announced that it would restrict unauthorized VPNs, and recently, all VPN applications have moved away from the Apple App Store version in China.
