From March 2024, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) will be able to block VPN services in app stores, including Play Market and App Store. MSK1 reports.
According to the media outlet, the agency will apply such measures if the service helps to bypass the blocking of resources banned on the territory of the Russian Federation.
Artem Sheikin, deputy chairman of the Council for Development of the Digital Economy at the Federation Council, explained to RIA Novosti that he believes it is important to restrict access to Instagram and Facebook of Meta, a company banned in Russia.
Earlier in an interview with TASS, he said that he had sent a letter to the Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media Maksut Shadaev with a proposal to limit the downloading of VPN services to RuStore app store in case of non-compliance with Russian laws «in terms of failure to provide access to the register of banned information.»
Chairman of the State Duma’s Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications, MP Alexander Khinshtein said that the news about blocking the services «sounds very strange.»
«The fact is that the Roskomnadzor is legally empowered to block such services, which happens regularly. Probably, we are talking about a completely different legislative innovation: limiting the search results of those VPNs that violate the law. Prohibited information is not filtered. Such an order — in implementation of the law we passed — is indeed being prepared. But it is, as they say in Odessa, two big differences,» he clarified.
