Kaspersky has announced that it will stop operating and selling its VPN product, Kaspersky Secure Connection, in Russia. In fact, the free version will no longer be available as of November 15, 2022.
The Moscow-based company announced earlier this week on its blog that it would be shutting down its VPN service in the country. The shutdown will be gradual, so that customers are minimally affected.
The paid version of Kaspersky Secure Connection VPN will still be available for purchase on the official website and mobile app stores until December 31, 2022.
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Customers who still have an active subscription will be able to use the service until 2023 (essentially until the subscription expires, which is annual, so it cannot be continued after 2023).
Users of the free version of Kaspersky Secure Connection based in Russia will need to look for different VPN options after November 15, 2022.
The company also said: “Changes to the operation of Kaspersky Secure Connection will not affect countries other than Russia. For users outside of Russia, the set of available functions and VPN servers will not change. Additional information on the issue can be found on the support website.”
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Russia: An unfriendly environment for VPNs
The options for a legal VPN are quite limited for Russian users now.
Roskomnadzor , the country's telecommunications regulator, has implemented VPN bans in June 2021 and again most recently in December 2021. This affects the use of NordVPN , Express VPN, ProtonVPN, VyprVPN, Opera VPN , as well as PrivateTunnel among others.
The reason for the ban on 15 VPNs in the country was that their providers refused to connect their services to the FGIS database. This would have allowed government-imposed censorship of VPN connections and also made ’ traffic and identities users subject to state control.
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Increased scrutiny of VPN use in Russia has forced the Ministry of Digital Transformation to ask all state-owned companies to declare which VPN products they use, for what purposes, and in what locations.
By December 2022, Roskomnadzor plans to introduce an online tool , based on artificial intelligence, which will analyze all new information appearing online.
Source: www.bleepingcomputer.com
