In late October 2024, Roskomnadzor, Russia's telecommunications and media regulator, blocked 197 virtual private networks (VPNs) that allowed users to access a host of restricted websites, including those belonging to the British Broadcasting Corporation, Instagram, and numerous independent Russian outlets operating in exile. While Moscow began blocking VPNs in 2021, it has intensified these efforts since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Unfortunately, more people across the world are facing restrictions like those imposed by Roskomnadzor. VPNs, which encrypt users' data, route traffic through servers remotely operated by the application's provider, and mask some of the users' identifying details, are critical tools for people seeking reliable information in repressive regimes, as are other circumvention solutions. These services also play an important role in shielding people from the watchful eyes of the authorities. But authoritarian regimes, which often block news outlets, civil society websites, and social platforms, are increasingly adopting repressive legislation to criminalize the use of these tools and remove them from app stores.
Closing down the information highway
Governments in at least 41 of the 72 countries examined in Freedom House's new report, Freedom on the Net 2024: The Struggle for Trust Online, blocked political, social, or religious content. Social media and communications platforms were blocked in just over a third of the countries we researched. These restrictions, which target some of the world's most popular websites and services as well as locally created websites, illustrate how important tools like VPNs are for facilitating access to reliable, unbiased, and diverse sources of information.
Because VPNs allow access to suppressed websites and can bolster user privacy, regimes are increasingly restricting them. In late November 2023, the Turkish government, which routinely blocks content critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, restricted access to 16 of the most popular VPNs in the country. In Belarus, where the authorities have blocked all independent media outlets, state-owned telecommunications operator Beltelecom blocked VPNs in May 2024. That impacted elections for the Coordination Council, an opposition-led deliberative body forced into exile in the aftermath of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka's fraudulent 2020 reelection. The voting platform was only accessible to Belarusians via VPN. Also in May, Myanmar's ruling junta launched a new firewall that blocked a slew of VPNs, effectively limiting users to 1,500 websites. Internet freedom in Myanmar consequently declined, leaving it tied with China as the worst-surveyed country in our report.
Criminalizing roadmaps to online freedom
Governments have also gone beyond explicit blocking orders, implementing new legal measures to stifle the use and promotion of VPNs. In February 2024, the Iranian government criminalized the use of "unauthorized" VPNs, including those that do not mirror its censorship apparatus. VPNs have allowed people in Iran to visit the ever-expanding list of banned websites and social media platforms. Likewise, ahead of Russia's sham presidential election in March, authorities there enacted a law criminalizing the advertisement and promotion of banned VPNs, empowering the government to charge those who advertise these tools or instruct people how to employ them. The introduction of criminal penalties for simply using or promoting these applications further disincentivizes their use.
App stores increasingly face official scrutiny, too. In July 2024, Apple removed 25 VPNs from its app store at Roskomnadzor's request; Apple reportedly continued to remove VPNs afterwards, taking a total of 98 apps off its store by September. Although Roskomnadzor has long demanded that Apple and Google remove certain banned applications from their marketplaces, this marked the first time it had ordered the removal of VPNs, an action previously taken by the Chinese government in 2017. Even as Russian government agencies rely on VPNs to circumvent sanctions, reportedly spending at least $145 million on government-approved VPNs in 2024, they continue to deploy roadblocks for ordinary people, impeding one of the few remaining avenues to avoid widespread online censorship.
How to support circumvention tools
To combat these restrictions, the private sector and democratic governments should continue to support the production and adoption of circumvention and anticensorship tools, ensuring that they are affordable, privacy-preserving, sustainable, and easy for diverse groups of people to adopt. These actors should also resist efforts to censor VPNs.
For their part, VPN providers should ensure that their products respect user privacy (not least by limiting their own use of user data and by clarifying what VPNs can and cannot do to protect users); are available in a wide array of languages; and meet users' needs. Hosting and cloud-storage providers can also support the adoption of VPNs and other tools by reducing their server costs, which increase in correlation with their adoption. Companies that provide operating systems and browsers can develop integrated tools that enhance user privacy. Finally, app-store operators should take all available legal measures, including strategic litigation, to rebuff removal requests targeting VPNs or information about how to use them.
Democratic governments should continue to support the development of these tools and should make them more accessible, including by making them available in several languages and for people with disabilities. The United States has led in this field, with State Department funding for supporting VPNs ballooning from $5 million in 2019 to over $30 million in 2024. Beyond financial support, democratic governments should help connect tools they fund with civil society groups that possess expertise and knowledge on local users' needs. Finally, democracies should clearly and unequivocally denounce restrictions on secure VPNs, especially as authoritarians increasingly seek to impose them. By bolstering VPNs and other tools, technology companies and democratic governments can help keep the world more connected and ultimately more free.