Security News > 2021 > December > Russian internet watchdog announces ban of six more VPN products
Russia's internet watchdog, 'Roskomnadzor', has announced the ban of six more VPN products, bringing the total number to more than a dozen, shows a notification to companies in the country.
The latest services added to the list of banned VPN services are Betternet, Lantern, X-VPN, Cloudflare WARP, Tachyon VPN, PrivateTunnel.
The Russian authorities in 2019 gave all VPN vendors who operated in the country an ultimatum to comply with their rules.
The other VPN vendors moved to establishing new servers just outside the Russian borders or using traffic masking techniques known to work well against China's 'Great Firewall'.
As Russian users are forced to uninstall banned products and turn to alternative options, authorities in the country evaluate which ones emerge as the most popular and add them to the block list.
This is not a 'whack-a-mole' situation, but rather one minimizes viable options for Russian users, as there aren't many trustworthy VPN vendors left for them to choose from anymore.