Demand for VPN services has increased rapidly since the intrusion began three weeks ago. As the pain intensifies offline, the peoples of both countries are seeking online freedom and looking to see through the fog of conflict.

VPN services are growing rapidly in Russia

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) service creates an encrypted tunnel between the user and the server they interact with. This helps protect traffic and prevent people from being identified, tracked and monitored.

Demand climbed 55% on Feb. 24, but has hovered around 1,000% throughout the competition. This partly reflects the desire of many Russians to continue to use social networks and keep in touch with friends and family in Ukraine.

Historically, demand for VPN services in Kazakhstan climbed 3,405% in January due to anti-government protests in Kazakhstan.

Demand for VPN services has also increased in Ukraine, up 609% at its peak, and people there have started installing VPNs on their devices as Russia swarms the border.

Russia has restricted access to many news and social media platforms. The country has blocked access to more than 300 websites that reported on events in Ukraine following the Russian invasion. It also added 6,000 sites to its Internet Deny List.

Russia censors IT services and Internet access within its borders through a range of laws and mechanisms. Foremost among them are URLs, domain names, and IP addresses banned by its centralized single registration; the country also uses deep packet inspection, which can disrupt some VPN services.

Blocked sites have been widely reported to include BBC News, Deutsche Welle and Voice of America. Many of these sites (including the BBC) are now mirroring via Tor, and the BBC has issued recommendations for using VPN services.

"It's clear that the Kremlin wants to control the narrative of its invasion and prevent the Russian people from getting news coverage from Ukraine," Miliano said. The problem for Russians is that some VPN services are officially banned.

Find a reliable VPN service

Top10VPN has published a list of useful Russian safe VPN services. Currently, the list includes Windscribe (the free version is limited to 10GB per month) as well as Astril VPN, Dedicated VPN, Surfer, and VPNArea.

All five services were apparently able to bypass Russian web filters in tests and offer strong encryption and private logging policies, the company said. However, not all of these services work well on iOS devices, and some popular services, including ExpressVPN, are banned in Russia.

Psiphon is often recommended, but "isn't optimized for privacy, which is a problem because using a VPN to access blocked content is illegal in Russia," Miliano said.

These services may change in the future or be restricted by government action. Migliano warned that Russia may be working to block VPN services, possibly at the network level. When it happens, some VPN services will stop working.

This sucks, but it's a cat-and-mouse game, and some VPN services still work even in highly repressive countries. (Top10VPN will monitor Russian VPN access in the future.)

VPN experts advise against installing or relying on unknown services, as security may be less stringent in some places. In 2019, Top10VPN warned that some VPN services may actually be owned by companies that are not trustworthy, lack data protection or have serious privacy flaws, showing the importance of a good IT outsourcing company as VPN services pass through them. servers that route your traffic, which can give them insight into what you're doing.

VPN Selection Checklist

When choosing a VPN, users should:

Always check information about the company - is it real? Does it have real addresses, phone numbers and people?

Does it have a privacy policy explaining its logging and data retention policies?

What data misuse protections are in place? Does the company delete server logs in real time?

Does it have customer support and rely on ad-supported services? .

Migliano offers some additional insights for people trying to get free information in conflict zones. "Tor is definitely useful because you can use it to access new sites like the BBC and Twitter. It's also an important tool," he said.

Tor isn't always the best option, however, as it's very slow compared to standard web browsers - although sometimes it may be the only option.

Shanghai Senior Role has been focusing on one-stop IT outsourcing business, IT system integration services, and IT operation and maintenance management services for decades.