Bypass block – Newspaper Kommersant No. 207 (7408) dated 11/09/2022

Since the beginning of blocking in Russia of foreign social networks and VPN services on a smartphone and PC, or even more than one, it has become an indispensable tool for almost every user. According to AppMagic, by the middle of the year, downloads of such services had increased six times. It would seem that it is high time for Russian developers to bring new products to the market. But for now, the opposite trend is emerging: Kaspersky Lab announced that by the end of the year it will disable the Kaspersky Secure Connection VPN application (which gave users access to more than 2,000 servers in 30 countries) for Russians. For users outside the country, access will remain.

The shutdown of one of the popular Russian VPNs coincided with the fact that the Ministry of Digital Transformation once again requested information from state-owned companies and banks about the private networks used. Such requests began back in 2021 – based on them, decisions are made which VPNs are not subject to blocking by Roskomnadzor. After the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine and the wave of sanctions, the trend intensified. Thus, Anton Gorelkin, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, has repeatedly stated that if a VPN is used to access blocked resources, it “needs to be fought against.”

At the same time, the number of purely domestic VPNs is surprisingly small. In addition to Kaspersky Lab, such products are being developed by HideMy.name, S-terra and Rostelecom, but the latter is only for the corporate segment. There is no information about the departure of other players yet, although the HideMy.name website was blocked back in 2018.

Kaspersky Lab did not explain the motivation for closing the product for the Russians, but the conclusions suggest themselves: the company’s decision lies in the cost-benefit analysis (cost-benefit analysis). As my interlocutors in the IT market explain, revenues from the sale of VPN services in Russia are low, but the pressure is growing – “it’s pointless to launch a service that will take into account all the wishes of regulators, it’s pointless: they simply won’t buy it.”

But there is also a more banal version. The fact is that Kaspersky Lab’s VPN worked on the basis of a license from a foreign Hotspot Shield VPN. This means that Secure Connection uses the Hotspot Shield server infrastructure, although it offers a different set of features, a proprietary interface, and a different price. The licensee could simply restrict the license for distribution in Russia. Kaspersky Lab itself does not comment on this version.

However, it is quite possible that the situation will have a positive impact on the Russians in the long run, for example, they will learn how to create their own, import-independent VPN servers. Fortunately, YouTube, which has not yet been blocked, has instructions on how to do this.