Ekaterina Mizulina stated that VPN services will be blocked starting March 1 because they are a "portal to hell." The expert says this is nonsense.
Head Safe Internet League, Ekaterina Mizulina met with schoolchildren in YekaterinburgDuring the meeting she confirmedthat all VPN services will be blocked in Russia from March 1.
"A VPN, especially a free one, is a portal to hell because it endlessly drains your device's data; it's completely vulnerable and can be passed on to third parties.", Mizulina said.
NotMoscow asked to comment on this statement IT Director of the Commonwealth of Investigative Journalists - Fund 19/29 Alexey ShlyapuzhnikovIn his opinion, all this is far from reality:
VPN technology itself has nothing to do with "portals to hell." It was originally created to securely connect remote computers into a single local virtual network and transfer data securely. Bypassing blocking is a side effect that wasn't originally intended, as the technology was developed in the 90s, when the internet was free and there were no blocking policies.
VPNs are actively used by Russian government agencies: for example, employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are prohibited from leaving the building without connecting to a service VPN. This ensures streaming encryption of transmitted data and access to the internal business of other ministries. The same practice is used by large corporations in Russia and around the world.
No one will be able to block all VPNs, because then they [the government] would be blocking their own ability to use this technology. Accordingly, blocking will most likely be limited to large services based on IP addresses and Gmail addresses, as is currently the case. If they start blocking by protocol, their VPN services will be marked in some way, which will be immediately visible to providers. This same marking will then be extended to independent VPN services. This means that a short-term block is possible—for a couple of days—and then workarounds will be found.
Photo: Nina Zotina / RIA Novosti
