VyprVPN Remains Accessible Despite Russian Blocks
The demise of Telegram didn’t entirely go as planned after Russian officials announced they were banning the service back in April. Russia’s move to block Telegram came after the encrypted messaging app refused to hand over user decryption keys to the FSB. Rather than a targeted attack on the app, Russia wound up blocking roughly 20 million IP addresses, including myriad Google and Amazon IP addresses. The publicity alone gave a significant boost to Telegram’s popularity in Russia.
With all those IPs inaccessible, a surge of Russian netizens turned to VPN services to circumvent the blocks. As a result, the Russian government stated it has blocked access to over 50 VPN services, proxies, and other privacy tools in a fresh round of sweeping censorship. As of this writing, Russian officials have not released a list of VPNs which they blocked.
VyprVPN remains accessible for Russian users. Compared against traffic from the previous month, VyprVPN has seen the following trends:
- Website Traffic is up 127%
- VyprVPN mobile downloads increased 269%
- New accounts created increased over 121%
Fresh reports emerged over the weekend about the government sighting down popular encrypted messaging app Viber for their next round of blocking, but other sources advise the speculation of such a block is not currently warranted.