Posts from Russian influencers about the “dangers of VPNs” began to appear on the network. SOTA drew attention to this. It published screenshots of three similar posts from Vkontakte. The posts say that the use of a VPN allegedly charges phones several times faster, applications freeze, and “free” VPNs can sell data stored in gadgets.
“I was told that VPNs are not transparent at all, they sell and resell all the information they can collect from a gadget,” writes Murad Ragimov, who has 92,000 followers on Vkontakte.
The account “Blogger Dad of the Year 7 Days in Business” writes: “Does the name Monero mean anything to you? This crypt is mined by scammers on the gadgets of those people who install VPNs for themselves.” 46 thousand people have subscribed to the account page.
The Annette Merkulova EXPERT Blog account, which has more than 200,000 subscribers, published a post saying that, according to the master who repaired the post’s author’s phone, the VPN app can steal bank card details. This post was later removed.
In addition, articles about the “danger” of VPN services appear in the pro-state media. The publications cite "information security experts" who also talk about the possibility of identity theft and the danger of virus infection while using a VPN.
After the start of the war in Ukraine, Roskomnadzor blocked the social networks Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as well as the websites of most independent publications, including The Insider, Radio Liberty, Current Time, Krym.Realii, Voice of America, New Times, Taiga.info, DOXA, Ekho Moskvy, Dozhd, Meduza, BBC Russian Service, Deutsche Welle and others.
In early June, it became known that Russia was taking measures to limit the operation of VPN services, as the means of bypassing blocking were recognized as a threat.