Russian telecoms guard dog Roskomnadzor has actually obstructed the Viber encrypted messaging app, utilized by numerous millions worldwide, for breaking the nation's legislation.
“Access to the Viber service is limited due to the infraction of the requirements of Russian legislation for organizers of info dissemination,” Russia's web regulator stated in a press declaration.
“Compliance with the requirements is essential to avoid dangers of utilizing the messenger for terrorist and extremist functions, hiring people to devote them, offering drugs, along with in connection with the publishing of prohibited details.”
Viber can be utilized on both desktop and mobile platforms. Since this month, Viber for Android has actually been downloaded over 1 billion times from Google Play Store, while its iOS equivalent has more than 744,000 scores on Apple's App Store.
This follows a Moscow court bought Viber to pay a 1 million robles great in June 2023 for stopping working to eliminate what Russia referred to as unlawful material, consisting of info on Russia's war in Ukraine.
In March 2023, Russia prohibited federal government and state companies from utilizing numerous foreign personal messaging applications, consisting of Discord, Microsoft Team, Telegram, Threema, Viber, WhatsApp, and WeChat.
In August of this year, Roskomnadzor likewise limited access to the Signal encrypted messaging service for breaching Russian anti-terrorism and anti-extremism legislation.
Numerous virtual personal network (VPN) apps were likewise prohibited in 3 waves: one in January 2020, one in June 2021, and the most current in December 2021.
Apple was likewise required to eliminate 25 VPN apps (consisting of NordVPN, Proton VPN, Red Shield VPN, Planet VPN, Hidemy.Name VPN, Le VPN, and PIA VPN) from the Russian App Store in August 2024 at the demand of Roskomnadzor since they were utilized to gain access to “prohibited material.”
A Viber representative was not right away offered for remark when gotten in touch with by BleepingComputer earlier today.
