What Roskomnadzor Demands from VPNs? Why VPN Unlimited Refuses to Comply?

Updated on July 13, 2021: From now on, traffic filtering, malware protection, and suspicious DNS activity blocking are available as a part of the separate DNS Firewall app.

On March 27th, Russian communications watchdog Roskomnadzor demanded that VPN Unlimited joined the federal system of blocked resources and networks. This would essentially oblige VPN Unlimited to restrict our Russian users from viewing content that their government bans. A number of other implications would also take effect.

In this piece, we explain what this all means and why VPN Unlimited will not comply with Roskomnadzor demands.

Roskomnadzor is short for The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, And Mass Media.

What did Roskomnadzor demand from VPN Unlimited?

In Roskomnadzor’s official letter to VPN Unlimited and other major VPN services operating in Russia, they informed that: “We send you the request on connection with federal state information system of blocked information resources and networks”. If we complied, a vast number of banned websites (for instance, LinkedIn, Telegram, and Pornhub) would become unavailable to our Russian clients.

There would be other consequences as well. To establish such a content filter, VPN Unlimited would have to start monitoring our users’ activities and provide this data to the Russian government. Or even worse, we would have to provide Roskomnadzor access to our infrastructure, both physical and online.

How did VPN Unlimited respond to Roskomnadzor and why?

Considering all of the above, KeepSolid’s reply shouldn’t surprise you. While some of the affected VPNs decided to comply with the demands, under no circumstances will VPN Unlimited cooperate with Roskomnadzor or join the Russian Register of blocked web resources.

If the Russian government starts blocking our services, VPN Unlimited will continue the fight against the censorship. To facilitate this, our team developed a dedicated KeepSolid Wise protocol. It is specifically designed to unblock VPN Unlimited in countries where the use of VPN’s is suppressed. Besides, we have years of experience of opposing the Great Firewall of China under our belts.

For our Russian users, pretty much nothing will change. We didn’t have any servers in Russia, so Roskomnadzor’s representatives will have no way of getting physical access to our facilities. And while we can’t be sure about the next step of the Russian government, you can be certain about one thing: we will NEVER give up on our users’ rights and freedoms.