The App Censorship Project found that the scale of VPN removals in Russia is even larger than previously reported: Between early July and September 18, 2024, Apple quietly removed 60 VPN apps from the local App Store, including several major VPN services. This number is significantly higher than the 25 VPN apps publicly acknowledged by Russian censorship agency Roskomnadzor.
The revelation highlights the Russian government’s continuing efforts to restrict access to VPN services, which are widely used to circumvent internet censorship and access blocked websites. The removal of these VPN apps from the App Store further limits the options available to Russian users trying to circumvent internet restrictions.
Chiara Castro of TechRadar:
The Kremlin has been targeting VPN tools for several months, but the latest wave of removals began on July 4, when at least four VPN apps reportedly disappeared from the Apple App Store in Russia. In early September, 50 human rights organizations, media outlets, IT companies, journalist groups, and public figures wrote an open letter calling on Apple to “immediately restore” VPN apps to the Russian App Store. At the time, however, experts estimated the number of removed VPN apps to be 29.
These results shed new light on the scale of VPN censorship in Russia. First, the report reveals a significant discrepancy between the number of removed applications admitted to by authorities (25) and the actual number (around 60), suggesting that the scale of VPN removals is much larger.
The researchers also tracked removal patterns and found that these were clustered on specific dates, suggesting coordinated behavior. Overall, the findings indicate that Apple “continues to remove VPN apps from the Russian App Store without public acknowledgment, affecting more than 20 percent of identified VPN apps,” the report states.
According to Ismail, Apple is actively holding itself accountable for its complicity in the Kremlin’s web censorship: “By unilaterally restricting access to these critical tools without transparency or due process, Apple is complicit in aiding government censorship. We demand that Apple uphold its human rights responsibilities and provide a clear explanation for these actions.”
MacDailyNews Opinion: What is the Russian government afraid of?
Censorship reflects a lack of self-confidence in society. – Potter Stewart
Those who want safety, security, and privacy will continue to use Apple’s App Store, but a single point of control is always risky, especially when it comes to capricious censorship (see Twitter pre-Musk, Apple’s App Store in China, etc.).
iPhone and iPad users, like Mac users, should have the ability to install third-party apps, even if they don’t, to keep Apple honest. The ability to ban an app is completely revoked the moment that the app is readily available in another App Store. – MacDailyNews, December 13, 2022
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