Russia has seemingly taken another step towards restricting its citizens’ online freedom as it blocks the Signal app. Users confirmed this move after having trouble accessing the applications.
Russia Blocks Signal App – Users Generate Complaints
According to recent reports, Russia blocks its users from using the privacy-focused communication app Signal, citing violation of laws.
Specifically, the Russian state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor confirmed banning the Signal app as the authorities consider the app violating anti-terrorism regulations. As per its statement to the Interfax news agency,
User access to the messenger Signal is restricted due to violations of the requirements of the Russian legislation whose fulfillment is necessary to prevent the use of the messenger for terrorist and extremist purposes.
While the regime didn’t share explicit details about this violation of laws from Signal, the country is infamous for implementing harsh surveillance practices over its citizens. Since the Signal app boasts robust end-to-end encryption and strong privacy policies, it is considered a safer communication medium globally – even better than WhatsApp. These strong privacy policies of Signal often draw negative attention from authoritarian regimes that find the app difficult to intrude on.
The incident surfaced online after Russian users complained about trouble accessing the app without a VPN, following which it became evident that Russia had banned the service.
In response, Signal confirmed via its official X account that the service is working on ways to evade such restrictions.
We have already started working on more advanced censorship circumvention techniques, but in order for these efforts to be most effective we need the big companies who are dragging their feet on moving away from plaintext SNI headers to start taking this problem more seriously.
The service also guided its users in enabling the “Censorship circumvention” feature in their apps to regain Signal access.
We’re aware of reports that access to Signal has been blocked in some countries. As a reminder, Signal’s built-in censorship circumvention feature might be able to help if your connection is affected: Signal Settings > Privacy > Advanced > Censorship circumvention (on)
Users may find more details in Signal’s blog post on setting up a proxy to bypass censorship. As explained, this feature makes the Signal traffic appear like regular traffic, as it “does not include the CONNECT method in a plaintext request,” which indicates proxy usage. Signal Proxy is available on Android and iOS clients, allowing all mobile users to secure their communications.
Banning Signal isn’t Russia’s first restrictive step. In the past, the country has blocked numerous services, such as VyprVPN and OperaVPN, that hinder its invasive control over citizens’ communications.
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