The multinational has removed dozens of apps, even though the Kremlin’s censorship body did not order the move. These services, half-permitted by the government, enable people in Russia to access social networks and independent media
Suspicious!
You can use most VPN services via the Wireguard or OpenVPN apps though, or even via some of the protocols natively supported by iOS not requiring any third-party app.
Normies never heard about wireguard nor openvpn, this enough to deter a lot of ppl imo
The issue is 3rd party apps make it easier for non-techie people to subvert censorship. Raising the bar works bigly in the Kremlin’s favor.
The U.S. company — whose phones are still sold in Russian stores despite the firm officially leaving the market due to the invasion of Ukraine…
Apple taking a brave stand as ever.
Edit: This was not the smartest comment.
Is your expectation that Apple will send in troops to raid phone stores inside of Russia?
Maybe they expect them to stop China from selling them to Russia, bahahaha
I see no mention of what they actually removed or how reputable they are. “VPN apps” are a reasonably common approach to spyware. (Common enough that literally Facebook has done it.)
They’re a good actual mechanism for spyware, because they see all your traffic.
Https means that they can’t see the actual contents without installing a root certificate, but they can see all the sites you visit and for how long. Reputable providers (at least the good ones) do not log any of this, but you should have a high level of trust in a provider to use their VPN, because they see a lot still.
That doesn’t mean that they didn’t ban legit VPNs. I don’t know. But it doesn’t really qualify as “reporting news” without at least a list of the apps that were banned, because they’re providing no information at all about the legitimacy of the apps, and it’s a category appealing to bad actors.
Whoops! Did they put them back I hope?
