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Apple quietly deletes nearly a hundred VPNs that allowed Russians to get around censorship (english.elpais.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/technology

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The multinational has removed dozens of apps, even though the Kremlin’s censorship body did not order the move. These services, half-permitted by the government, enable people in Russia to access social networks and independent media

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I see no mention of what they actually removed or how reputable they are. "VPN apps" are a reasonably common approach to spyware. (Common enough that literally Facebook has done it.)

[–] jaybone 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You mean vpn apps deploy spyware?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

They're a good actual mechanism for spyware, because they see all your traffic.

Https means that they can't see the actual contents without installing a root certificate, but they can see all the sites you visit and for how long. Reputable providers (at least the good ones) do not log any of this, but you should have a high level of trust in a provider to use their VPN, because they see a lot still.

That doesn't mean that they didn't ban legit VPNs. I don't know. But it doesn't really qualify as "reporting news" without at least a list of the apps that were banned, because they're providing no information at all about the legitimacy of the apps, and it's a category appealing to bad actors.