Information about the blocking of websites by Roskomnadzor has long ceased to be out of the ordinary. When employees of this department discover resources with content of a truly extremist nature or propagating pedophilia and other similar heresy, news feeds trumpet about it. But the much more voluminous side of the matter, when ordinary users become victims, can be found only in the blogosphere or on the sites of the relevant Internet communities. Their representatives and participants are de facto guilty without guilt, and de jure - in the eyes of the supervisory authority - are almost the main distributors of destructive ideas and pillars of the porn industry.
Experience shows that in this case it is not necessary to appeal to the objectivity of the chief domestic overseer of legality in the network. He has one comb for all. And if you have already fallen into the distribution or want to avoid it, this article is for you. Why and how sites are blocked, how the created restrictions are circumvented - we will try to objectively answer these and other questions.
Grounds for blocking
The Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media can roll your resource into a cake for a huge list of reasons. Just a hint of their presence is enough. Moreover, she is not alone in her activities. The Prosecutor General's Office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Rospotrebnadzor, the Federal Tax Service, and even district prosecutors and courts of general jurisdiction successfully “bring shells” to the execution of a particular site. Here we can also single out a completely separate category - "woodpeckers" -competitors or simply disgruntled users who can stupidly and sometimes unreasonably trick you into Roskomnadzor. The result will be the same - blocking... but back to the question of its justification... Even following the list listed above, the corresponding stop list is easily determined:
- Extremist materials or calls, including invitations to unauthorized rallies and other public events.
- Pornography in all its forms, especially for children, intimate services.
- Promotion of drugs, methods of their manufacture, purchase, use, etc.
- Provoking suicide, a description of its methods.
- The widest range of pirated products (movies, music, books, etc.).
- Dissemination of knowingly defamatory information.
- Use of offensive language on the resource.
- Illegal commerce: attempts to sell cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, medicines, diplomas, certificates, forms, certificates, etc.
Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that one "fine" day you may suddenly find that your site is blocked. Without warning! And this is only due to the fact that you decided to meet with your former classmates at the monument to Pushkin and placed an ad on your page. In the same Prosecutor General's Office, at the request of which Roskomnadzor conducts instant blocking, in such an ad may be seen as a call for an unauthorized mass event. And it's not a fact that the Prosecutor General's Office will be the initiator. It may be the same “woodpecker” -competitor who will prepare his statement in thick colors and with scary pictures. By the way, in this unattractive perspective, from the submission of all the same competitors, the harmless and humorous post "Author, kill yourself with a run!" Can be regarded. Isn't it forced to commit suicide? Absurd, you say, and we will agree with you, but still we will give each site owner a recommendation-aphorism from Kozma Prutkov - "Bdi!"
Technical blockade methods from Roskomnadzor
It all starts with filing a lawsuit. The corresponding "cart" with the requirement to limit the possibilities of this or that resource by virtue of the materials posted on it comes from one of the above departments or "interested" users. The court considers the application and, in the event of a positive verdict, Roskomnadzor notifies the hosting provider of the need to eliminate illegal content. The provider accordingly addresses the owner of the site and, if the content continues to hang at the end of the allotted period, then the resource is blocked. Today there are two methods of blocking:
- Block access to the domain.
- Disable IP the address of the server hosting the resource.
The second option is used less and less, since this practice is quite pernicious and in fact limits the rights of other users who have nothing to do with breaking the law. In this case, their fault lies only in the fact that their domains are located on the sameIP- address as the site of the offender, which means it is also blocked. And there can be up to 1000 such domains! Such an accidental obstruction was, for example, in 2013 the domain of the Yandex company, and a year later -Gazeta. ru. As it turned out, they just ended up in bad company.
The first option is more popular today. Roskomnadzor has established interaction with the largest domestic hosting and Internet providerswho actively cooperate with Roskomnadzor and promptly block access to prohibited sites.
How to find out why the site was blocked?
This is easy to do. If you have patience. First of all, send your virtual stops to the registry of banned domain names - blocklist.rkn.gov.ru. Here it is enough to enter the address of the resource, after which you will immediately be given the date and reason for blocking. But prepare yourself for a lengthy answer, which will only contain information about how many pages with illegal information were found on your site.
Where to write if blocked by Roskomnadzor
The fact is that they will not immediately provide you with data about what specific information is being discussed and on which of the pages it is posted. You will receive this information by sending an appropriate letter toThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ... The answer will take about a week. After reviewing it, as well as removing suspicious content, send a notification to the same address, and in a couple of days you are at work and outside the register of prohibited sites!
Feedback is also provided on the Roskomnadzor resource. True, the scheme is somewhat veiled here. Going to the site rkn.gov.ru, you will not find the link you need. To do this, you need to click on the "Main page", which will transfer to rkn.gov.ru/news/rsoc/ and only here you can find the link "Generate an appeal", by clicking on which you will finally see the form to fill out.
What to write in case of blocking? (example letter)
Hello.
The page of my site http://site.ru was entered in the register of prohibited sites. I inform you that I have eliminated the reason for entering the site into the register, all links to prohibited sites (poker rooms, casinos and bookmakers) have been removed. In this regard, I ask you to remove the page http://site.ru from this register.
Yours faithfully,
Ivanov Ivan Ivanovich.
How do website owners get around blocking?
It is said that there is no reception against a scrap if there is no other scrap. So the site owners have replenished the arsenal of confronting Roskomnadzor with several tools popular in the virtual world. The latter, although they are not in the full sense an analogue of scrap, are no less effective. Let's consider some of them - those that have been adopted by the owners of gambling sites.
Fun blocking
Roskomnadzor sometimes finds itself in curious situations. There have been such things. In their unbridled zeal to prohibit anything and everything, which sometimes resembles almost blind fanaticism, Roskomnadzor's "experts" last year entered the IP-address on which the domain of the supervisory agency itself was located in the banned register. Thus, the guys disconnected themselves from the Internet.
The Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media was driven into a similar situation by its “masters” even when they “declared war” on the software manufacturer Comodo Group, whose services the department actively used. Another trip to yourself! Moreover, Comodo Internet Security has been used by many government departments and other organizations, not to mention private users.
Another interesting incident occurred when Roskomnadzor blocked the sites YouPorn and PornHub. The unlocking conditions are the same - the elimination of illegal content. True, the department did not clarify anything, as there was no specifics in the corresponding court decision. In response, PornHub made Roskomnadzor an offer to provide a premium account in exchange for unblocking.
The data and facts presented in our review speaks for one thing. Nobody disputes the fact that it is necessary to fight against grudge and terrorism not only in reality, but also in the Internet space. However, this should be done a little more deliberately, and the principles and methods of work should not always be developed according to a single template. We are not talking about selectivity, but rather about the correct definition of goals and means to achieve them. Until a coherent and objective strategy for the work of Roskomnadzor is built on the Internet, an increasing number of ordinary Russians will fall under the roller of involuntary repression, for whom the World Wide Web has become not so much a space of entertainment as a platform for work and earnings.
02/12/2018, MON, 10:41, Moscow time, Text: Igor Korolev
Interesting metamorphoses occurred with the public discussion of the draft Roskomnadzor order on methods of blocking access to prohibited Internet sites by providers. The Ministry of Economic Development criticized the initial version of this order, after which Roskomnadzor changed the versions of both documents posted by them on the regulation.gov.ru portal.
Difficult public discussion of the draft Roskomnadzor order
On the regulation.gov.ru portal, a public discussion of the draft Roskomnadzor order on the approval of requirements for telecom operators to block access to prohibited Internet sites has ended. Currently, the document has been signed by the head of the department Alexander Zharov and sent for registration to the Ministry of Justice.
During a public discussion of the document, the Ministry of Economic Development criticized the rule on the obligation of Internet providers to automatically determine the IP addresses of blocked sites. After that, Roskomnadzor changed the original version of the document, according to the experts who worked on the document, in violation of the procedures of the regulation.gov.ru website.
Why Roskomnadzor decided to explain the methods of blocking websites
Since 2012, all Russian Internet providers are required to block access to resources in the Registry of Prohibited Sites. The Registry Operator is Roskomnadzor. In the Registry, relative to each resource, by default, its domain, network (IP) address and a pointer to a specific page with prohibited information (URL) are indicated.
ISPs can block websites by IP addresses and URLs. The second method is more preferable: it allows you to avoid blocking other pages of the specified site or other sites that do not contain prohibited information. But in order to block by URL, the provider must set the DPI system. In addition, DPI does not help with blocking sites that use encryption (SSL).
Roskomnadzor has changed the requirements for blocking sites, replacing the draft order on the regulation.gov.ru website
Initially, the operators themselves chose the method of blocking, and Roskomnadzor gave only recommendations. But in 2017, amendments were made to the Law "On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection" allowing Roskomnadzor to determine the blocking method. To this end, the department began preparing a corresponding order.
How Roskomnadzor wanted to oblige operators to determine the IP addresses of prohibited sites themselves
The first version of the draft Roskomnadzor order was posted on the regulation.gov.ru portal. According to the document, if the Registry contains the IP address, domain and URL of a resource, the operator must restrict access to the specified page only. In this case, access should be limited even if the resource changes its IP address.
Initial negative feedback on the Roskomnadzor document
To this end, the provider must independently address the DNS system (stores the correspondence between domains and IP addresses), that is, implement DNS resolving. If the site uses encryption, access to the corresponding domain should be limited by filtering DNS queries.
If only the IP address is indicated in the Registry, access to it must be blocked. If only a domain is specified in the Registry, access to this domain should be blocked for all protocols, not just HTTP.
Unique hash function from Roskomnadzor
In addition, the draft document stated that telecom operators must comply with a certain format of the information page that the user sees when entering a blocked resource. Such a page should not contain news, advertisements and information on how to bypass the blocking. In this case, the HTML code of the page must contain a hidden unique string with a hash function set by Roskomnadzor.
How Roskomnadzor was "trolled"
In 2017, DNS resolving opened a hole in the Roskomnadzor blocking system. Attackers, having gained control over the domains entered in the Registry, in the DNS corresponding IP addresses to the IP addresses of known resources. As a result, access problems were observed for popular resources that do not have prohibited content.
Positive feedback on the amended Roskomnadzor document
Despite this situation, regulators continued to insist on maintaining the requirement for operators to independently determine the IP addresses of blocked sites. So, in response to a request from the hosting provider "Dremuchiy Les", the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications reported that Roskomnadzor had taken a number of actions to solve the problems arising from this method.
In particular, together with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, work was carried out with respect to persons exploiting this vulnerability. Also, a "white list" of sites that should not be blocked was compiled.
What the Ministry of Economic Development and other subjects opposed
During the discussion on the regulation.gov.ru portal, various stakeholders made comments about the draft order proposed by Roskomnadzor. Thus, VimpelCom indicated that the department is going beyond its powers, requiring telecom operators to automatically determine the IP addresses of blocked sites and setting the format of the page that informs about the blocking.
The Media Communication Union (MKS) considered it incorrect to introduce requirements to the page informing the subscriber about blocking the resource he requested. Thus, when accessing a pirated site, the provider could offer users information about sites with legal content.
In addition, in some cases, providers receive court decisions on blocking sites directly, even before they are entered into the Register. In this connection, the information format proposed by Roskomnadzor would be incorrect, the ISS calculated.
On February 5, 2018, the regulation.gov.ru portal published a negative opinion on the assessment of the regulatory impact (RIA), which was made by the Ministry of Economic Development on the draft Roskomnadzor order. The department opposed imposing on telecom operators the obligation to automatically determine the IP addresses of prohibited sites, since this is the responsibility of Roskomnadzor.
In addition, the Ministry of Economic Development pointed out that there was no justification for the need for communication operators to include hidden unique hash functions from Roskomnadzor in information pages reporting the facts of blocking.
The missing draft of the Roskomnadzor order and the recall of the Ministry of Economic Development
The review itself was dated November 2017. Last week, the press service of Roskomnadzor told CNews that this review was outdated: after receiving comments, Roskomnadzor finalized the draft order, it received a positive opinion from the Ministry of Economic Development and was sent to the Ministry of Justice.
The press service of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade confirmed that Roskomnadzor finalized the draft order, and provided CNews with a positive response to this document. Then, at the end of last week, the initial draft of the Roskomnadzor order and the negative response to it from the Ministry of Economic Development disappeared from the regulation.gov.ru portal.
Instead, a new draft Roskomnadzor order has appeared, which does not require the automatic determination of the Internet provider of the IP addresses of blocked sites. Another controversial rule about a unique hidden line in the code of information pages reporting the facts of blocking was replaced by the obligation to place on the indicated pages a unique identifier of the provider, indicating the fact of blocking a prohibited page by it.
In addition, it will be possible to place advertisements on such pages. Along with the change in the initial draft of the Roskomnadzor order, the negative response of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade also disappeared from the portal. Instead, the ministry posted a positive review of the new draft Roskomnadzor order.
General Director of the hosting provider "Dremuchiy Les" Philip Kulin, who participated in the public discussion of this document, considers the incident to be a violation of the RIA procedure. “According to the regulations, in the event of disagreements, they had to be resolved by the government,” says Kulin. “We are dealing with the substitution of both the original document from Roskomnadzor and the conclusion on it.” The very same exclusion from the document of the provision on the automatic determination of IP addresses of prohibited sites by providers Kulin considers positive, but the document itself, according to him, leaves many unclear points.
Addition
On Monday evening, February 12, 2018, the press service of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade told CNews that the first version of the draft Roskomnadzor order, as well as the ministry's negative response to it, were preserved on the regulation.gov.ru portal, and they can be found on one of the tabs on page of the corresponding document.
However, as CNews was assured by two experts who followed the discussion of this document, the CEO of the Institute for Internet Research Karen Ghazaryan and the author of the Telegram channel "For Telecom" Mikhail Klimarev, on Friday February 9, 2018, the first versions of documents on this page were not. It was on this day on the regulation.gov.ru portal that the draft Roskomnadzor order and the response to it from the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade were updated.
Correspondence of expert Mikhail Klimarev with technical support regulation.gov.ru
On Monday, February 12, 2018, Mikhail Klimarev wrote an appeal to the technical support of the regulation.gov.ru portal in connection with the replacement of the negative conclusion of the Ministry of Economic Development with a positive one. The answer from the technical support was that the Ministry of Economic Development is aware of this situation and can provide explanations there. The technical support did not report that the initial versions of these documents are still on the resource.
Appendix 2
After the publication of this material, the RBC holding, which owns the CNews publication, received a letter addressed to the general director of RBC Nikolay Molibog signed by the head of Roskomnadzor Alexandra Zharova.
CNews cites the text of the letter in full.
On February 12, 2018, an article titled “Roskomnadzor has retroactively changed the rules of blocking sites ".
The article contains statements that do not correspond to reality, damaging the interests and business reputation of Roskomnadzor.
The article, in particular, claims that Roskomnadzor "changed" on the regulation.gov.ru portal, intended for public discussion of draft regulations, a draft order approving requirements for methods (methods) of restricting access to information resources applied in accordance with the Federal the law "On information, information technologies and information protection" and posted information on restricting access to information resources. "
We point out the inadmissibility of disseminating information that does not correspond to reality.
Draft Roskomnadzor Order "On Approval of Requirements for Methods (Methods) to Restrict Access to Information Resources Used in accordance with the Federal Law" On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection "and posted information on restricting access to information resources" (hereinafter - the order) , as well as the summary report on the regulatory impact assessment in relation to the order (hereinafter referred to as the summary report) were posted on the official website regulation.gov.ru for public discussion and independent anti-corruption expertise as part of the regulatory impact assessment in the period from September 25, 2017 to 10/20/2017 (project ID 02/08 / 09-17 / 00073424).
Upon completion of the public discussion, the order and the summary report were sent to the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia to prepare a conclusion on the assessment of the regulatory impact.
After receiving a negative opinion on the assessment of the regulatory impact, the order was revised by Roskomnadzor and re-sent to the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia.
As a result, Roskomnadzor received a positive opinion on the assessment of the regulatory impact, the order was signed by the head of the Service and sent for state registration to the Ministry of Justice of Russia.
Please note that Roskomnadzor has fully complied with the procedure for developing, assessing the regulatory impact and publishing draft departmental acts.
These procedures are established by the Rules for assessing the regulatory impact of draft regulatory legal acts and draft decisions of the Eurasian Economic Commission by federal executive authorities (approved by Decree of the Government of Russia dated December 17, 2012 No. 1318) and the Rules for the preparation of regulatory legal acts of federal executive authorities and their state registration ( approved by the Decree of the Government of Russia dated 13.08.1997 No. 1009).
Revising a document based on comments and suggestions is an absolutely normal practice in the preparation and approval of regulations. Accordingly, the draft order and the conclusion on the assessment of the regulatory impact were not “substituted” on the official website regulation.gov.ru, but were replaced with actual versions.
We also draw your attention to the fact that the need for the participation of the Government of the Russian Federation in the development of a departmental act of the federal executive body arises only in the event of unresolved disagreements between the state developer body and the coordinating state bodies. In this case, there were no disagreements between Roskomnadzor and the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia at the time of sending the order for state registration.
Roskomnadzor's actions fully comply with the current legislation and were committed to update the information posted on the official website regulation.gov.ru.
We ask the editorial staff to be more careful when preparing publications.
In accordance with Art. 46 of the Law of the Russian Federation No. 2124-1 of December 27, 1991 "On the Mass Media", please place this text on the Cnews website, in the same section in which the article "Roskomnadzor has retroactively changed the rules for blocking sites" was published.
In addition, we draw your attention to the fact that in case of the continued dissemination of information that does not correspond to reality and harms the business reputation of Roskomnadzor, the Service has the right to go to court in accordance with Article 152 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation.
Few of the Internet users have not yet heard of Roskomnadzor and the draft laws related to the worldwide computer network. Sometimes you enter the site address, but together the expected page you see something like this:
In this article we will try to understand how the law regarding blocking sites operates, what happens on the side of the hosting provider and, most importantly, how this problem is solved.
What does Roskomnadzor do
The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Communications - or Roskomnadzor for short - is the federal executive body of Russia. Roskomnadzor includes several departments, in particular, the Information Technology Supervision Department. In addition to state control over compliance with licensing conditions and mandatory requirements of the legislation of the Russian Federation in the fields of communications, media and information technology, Roskomnadzor is also responsible for the protection of personal data. In other words, Roskomnadzor monitors how the laws of the Russian Federation are implemented on the Internet, and if it detects a violation of the law on any resource, then certain measures are taken.
The majority of Russians learned about this authority in mid-2012, when Federal Law No. 139-FZ was adopted: amendments to other federal laws involve filtering web resources and putting them on a kind of blacklist. As a result, on November 1, 2012, the Unified Register of Banned Domain Names and Network Addresses appeared - a database that contains data on sites with information prohibited for distribution in the Russian Federation, as well as in some cases on IP addresses belonging to these sites.
However, the Roskomnadzor Register is not the only resource, once in which a website or IP address will be blocked. There is also the Federal List of Extremist Materials and the Register of Resources blocked by the decision of the Prosecutor General's Office (as a rule, most of the sites in it coincide with sites from the Federal List of Extremist Materials). If the site is in one of these lists, it is automatically blocked on the territory of the Russian Federation by all network service providers.
Website blocking procedure
Now let's talk about how web resources are blocked.
It all starts with an appeal to the court - usually it comes from an interested person or bodies authorized by law. In their appeal, they demand to close access to any website, based on the materials that are located on it. These materials may relate to extremism, drugs, sex services, gambling, profanity, suicide, remote sale of cigarettes, alcohol or medicines, as well as the sale of higher education documents and medical certificates and other topics that are prohibited by existing legislation.
Further, the court considers this appeal and makes either a positive or negative decision. If the court makes a positive decision that access to any website on the Internet should be restricted due to a violation of the law, then, on the basis of this decision, Roskomnadzor sends a notification to the hosting provider on whose resources the website is hosted. Further, the hosting provider must take certain measures within the period specified in the notification: either convince the client to remove the prohibited content, or restrict access to the content itself.
If it was not possible to take adequate actions within the prescribed time limit, then Roskomnadzor, for its part, automatically blocks the domain or, if it fails to ban the site in this way, the entire network address of the server on which the resource is located. And then, within a short period of time, this IP address is sequentially blocked by all Internet providers, that is, the IP address becomes unavailable throughout the Russian Federation.
Why are several sites blocked by one IP address?
Shared hosting service implies that your site will be located on a server that hosts many other sites you are not familiar with. If Roskomnadzor fails to block a site with prohibited material by domain name, it blocks the IP address of the server on which this site is located. Unfortunately, because of this, all other sites that are located on this server are blocked.
Hosting provider's perspective
Despite the fact that the rules for using Timeweb hosting services prohibit the placement and dissemination of any information, the dissemination of which is prohibited by the laws of the Russian Federation or other countries, some site owners ignore this point and violate the legislation of the Russian Federation. Since there are a lot of sites hosted by Timeweb - more than 300 thousand - it is not possible to quickly track the content of each of these sites. Therefore, a notification from Roskomnadzor regarding the blocking of a particular resource becomes an unpleasant surprise, which our specialists begin to deal with immediately after receiving it.
When Roskomnadzor sends an official notice signed with an electronic digital signature, our legal department specialists send a message to the site owner with a request to remove the prohibited content within 24 hours (or the entire resource if Roskomnadzor found prohibited materials on every page of the site). If the client fulfilled the requirement, then an official response is sent to Roskomnadzor; Roskomnadzor conducts a check and sends a notification about the removal of the address from the Register.
If it is not possible to get action from the client within a certain period of time, our specialists independently restrict access to this page or the entire site. In the overwhelming majority of cases, it is possible to cope with blocking at this stage - our specialists block a resource with prohibited content, and as a result the problem is solved.
Naturally, there are situations when a client later asks to unblock his resource: in this case, we meet halfway, but only on condition that all prohibited materials have been removed from the site. In this case, an official notification is sent to Roskomnadzor, and the client's website becomes available. However, in the event of a repeated violation (as well as when some of the prohibited materials are saved on the site), the unlocking is no longer performed.
We understand how important it is to respond promptly to Roskomnadzor notifications. Entering an IP address into the Registry of Banned Domain Names and Network Addresses is an event that is highly undesirable for a hosting provider and owners of all sites located at this network address. That is why all notifications from Roskomnadzor are of the highest priority and are processed by our specialists in the first place. Also, our hosting has set up a procedure for regularly checking whether any address from the Timeweb network has entered one of the Registries.
Blocking the IP address of the Timeweb server is an outrageous event that has its own unique reasons each time. Despite the isolated cases of such a turn of events, the company has clear instructions on what needs to be done in such a situation.
If the worst thing happened, and the IP address of a server was blocked, then all efforts are rushed to remove this network address from the Registry as soon as possible. As a rule, it takes about two days for all Russian providers to complete blocking of an address at the network level. Therefore, Timeweb specialists are doing everything possible to unblock the address ahead of time.
Solving this problem requires serious teamwork: for example, in system administration department specialists are responsible for interaction with providers, setting locks at the network level and changing the main server address. Involved in the work and legal department, which controls the blocking and interacts with Roskomnadzor. Specialists technical support they also do not stand aside - they are the ones who process requests from customers and monitor the blocking situation, analyzing the number of user complaints. Naturally, in a situation where other clients suffer because of one unscrupulous user, their requests are processed first.
The primary task at this stage is to block the site with prohibited content. Its owner receives a message with information about the blocking and its reason. Then our specialists contact Roskomnadzor and some network providers, who update the lists of the Registry of Banned Sites several times a day, blocking the servers automatically - they are notified that the resource has been blocked, and the blocking can be removed. And in order to restore access to other sites located on this server, while Roskomnadzor is considering the notification, our engineers are changing the IP address.
Ultimately, Raskomnadzor removes the IP address from its Registry, and the hosting continues to operate normally.
Blocking an address at a provider by a court decision
Unfortunately, it is extremely rare, but there are situations when the hosting provider not only cannot influence the court's decision, but does not even know about it. This happens in those cases when, without involving Roskomnadzor, the prosecutor's office applies directly to the court with a request to block a certain resource. The defendant is a specific network provider, in whose network, after a positive court decision, this site will be blocked. In such situations, the hosting provider does not receive any notifications and learns about the blocking after the fact. Naturally, our engineers start working on this situation as soon as they receive the first question or complaint from the client. And, as a rule, they quickly achieve unlocking.
Challenging the decision of Roskomnadzor
It should be remembered that the decision of Roskomnadzor can be challenged: as soon as our specialists from the legal department understand that some mistake has occurred, and the blocking of the site by Roskomnadzor was carried out illegally, we take the side of our client and send a letter to Roskomnadzor asking to clarify the information ... Also, the client himself can directly apply to Roskomnadzor and the court for the protection of his rights.
If you want to know if your site is in the Registry, then you can check it at https://eais.rkn.gov.ru/
Conclusion
Blocking an IP address by Roskomnadzor is an unpleasant, but, fortunately, an extremely rare event, the consequences of which our specialists manage to cope with within the shortest possible time. We pay special attention to each of the notifications we receive from Roskomnadzor, which is why we manage to prevent almost all critical situations.
Telecom operators are blocking not only websites prohibited in Russia, but also completely legal resources of banks and retailers, Roskomnadzor found out. Experts note that companies are thus insured against penalties
Photo: Markku Ulander / Lehtikuva / TASS
Roskomnadzor discovered cases of excessive blocking of sites on the Internet by telecom operators in various regions of Russia. This is stated in letters sent out at the end of January to operators of Roskomnadzor departments in the Tyumen region, Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets autonomous districts, as well as the Murmansk region. Copies of the documents are at the disposal of RBC, their authenticity was confirmed by employees of two regional Internet providers.
According to the documents, during a random check, Roskomnadzor discovered that the official websites of the M.Video retailer, Alfa Bank and the Pandora jewelry store did not open on the network of one of the telecom operators, although these resources were not included in the Unified Register of Prohibited Information and were blocked shouldn't have. In this regard, the Main Radio Frequency Center, subordinate to Roskomnadzor, conducts an unscheduled inspection of operators in order to find out which companies excessively block resources on the Internet, the letters of Roskomnadzor say.
A spokesman for the press service of Roskomnadzor confirmed that the agency periodically sends such letters "as part of preventive work" to draw operators' attention to the need for correct work with registers of prohibited information, and also conducts "preventive explanatory conversations." Cases of unauthorized blocking, he said, were identified in a number of regions of the country, including complaints from site administrators.
Revision of the "Inspector"
A unified register of prohibited information, which includes sites with child pornography, propaganda of extremism, drug use, suicide and other illegal content, has been maintained in Russia since November 2012. When a site with such information is found, Roskomnadzor identifies the hosting provider that has this resource and sends it a notification about the need to remove illegal content. If the owner of the site or the hosting provider does not delete the information within three days, the site is entered by the department into the register, after which telecom operators must restrict users' access to it within 24 hours.
At the moment, there are more than 100 thousand entries in the Unified Register of Prohibited Information.
Since December 2015, Roskomnadzor began to require telecom operators to implement the Auditor system, a software and hardware complex that automatically checks whether the operator blocks sites from the register of prohibited information. According to Art. 13.34 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, a fine for legal entities for failure to fulfill the obligation to block prohibited sites is up to 100 thousand rubles. According to RBC, from June 2016, when the first court decision was made in the case of violation of the blocking rules by the operator, to August 2017 inclusive, 836 court decisions were made in such cases. Almost half of the courts ended with the issuance of warnings for the operators, 28% of the cases - with fines, in the rest of the cases, the claims were rejected on formal grounds.
As follows from the latest letters from Roskomnadzor, it was the “Inspector” system that helped to identify excessive blocking of sites not included in the register. At the same time, according to the documents, some telecom operators "deliberately interfere with the regular operation" of the system.
For a free Runet
Operators sometimes do excessive blocking of resources on the Internet. “To prevent the risks of getting fines from Roskomnadzor, some operators create systems that knowingly process or even completely block entire blocks of IP addresses, and not a specific address from the register. This is due to the fact that sites included in the registry often change their IP address to avoid blocking, ”says Philip Kulin, CEO of Diphost.
He also notes that if a site is removed from the register of prohibited information, its unblocking in operators' networks may be delayed. In addition, according to Kulin, the problem of the so-called DNS attack has not been resolved - in the course of it, an attacker who has gained access to managing a domain entered in the register of prohibited information can assign him any IP address and ultimately block any website in this way. In June 2017, due to the massive exploitation of this vulnerability, users for some time had problems accessing the websites of the largest Russian banks. In addition, according to Philip Kulin, some operators, in order not to receive a fine, make a special separate segment of the network with stricter filtering, where they install the Auditor system, which allows them to create the appearance of fulfilling the requirements of the regulator.
A representative of the Komkor company (part of the Akado group) said that although the company did not receive notifications from Roskomnadzor, excessive blocking of sites is “theoretically possible”. “This may be due to technical problems, but in our practice there were no such cases. Also, excessive blocking occurs when the operator must close access to a page via the https protocol - it does not allow blocking a separate page that is included in the register, all pages of the site are blocked, ”said a company representative.
Incidents like this did happen. In June 2016, there was a popular cloud service Amazon S3 in Russia, although at the request of the Federal Tax Service, only the 888poker poker room page located on its platform was included in the register. The blocking of the entire resource was due precisely to the fact that Amazon S3 uses the secure https protocol, which does not allow blocking individual pages. Only after Amazon itself deleted the page to which the Russian authorities had a claim, the resource was removed from the register.
“In general, the smaller the operator, the less resources he has to deal with registry errors, purchase systems that are used to filter network traffic. And, frankly, it's hard to blame these operators. There is a lot of confusion in the work of the register of prohibited information and the "Inspector" system, "says Karen Ghazaryan, a leading analyst at the Russian Association for Electronic Communications. He notes that “a lot of unnecessary things are added to the register - different technical addresses like CDN CloudFlare (content delivery system. - RBK), as a result of which other resources "or IP-addresses" suffer, "on which not only the site with illegal content is located, but also many others." “At the same time, the“ Auditor ”system does not work perfectly either,” emphasizes Ghazaryan.
And poker players increasingly need to look for various methods of access to "prohibited" sites. Today we will analyze in detail the maximum number of blocking bypass methods, talk about the reaction of poker rooms to the inability to enter the lobby and much more interesting. After our step-by-step instructions with examples, you will receive a comprehensive answer to the question of how how to bypass the blocking of sites you need.
Browser capabilities
Turbo mode
Opera and Yandex browser have a "Turbo" mode, which allows you to visit sites that are prohibited. In the first of the browsers, you can enable it directly at the bottom of the tab or through "Settings", "Quick Settings" and tick the "Enable Opera Turbo" checkbox:
With Yandex, everything is a little more complicated, because by default this mode is turned on automatically when the download speed is less than 128 Kbps. If it is increased to 512 Kbps, it is disabled again. But, of course, you can change the settings and thus forcibly turn on the turbo mode. Step-by-step instruction:
- Enter the Settings menu.
- Find the Turbo section at the bottom of the window.
- Select the "Always on" option (it should be noted that with a high connection speed to the Internet and a constantly active mode, pages may, on the contrary, load more slowly):
Why does this allow you to bypass the blocking of Roskomnadzor? In turbo mode, the browser functions like a proxy: the requested data is transmitted through the proxy server of Opera / Yandex, which compress traffic. Thus, we not only get the desired effect, but also, as a rule, increase the speed of loading sites.
Supplements
Are you using Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome and are also wondering how to bypass Roskomnadzor? Excellent! There are tons of plugins on the net that allow you to surf anonymously, forgetting about any prohibitions. So, for example, for Mozilla there is Hide My Ass! Web Proxy. For Chrome, you can use a similar plugin.
Frigate is a quality universal supplement. It differs from the previous ones, as it makes it possible to do the so-called "smart proxying". In a nutshell: this plugin does not pass all 100% of your traffic through the proxy server, but only what belongs to a resource that is blocked in Russia or has been blocked by your provider specifically.
Chrome users will also love ZenMate, an add-on that encrypts and sends your traffic through staging servers in other countries. This approach allows you to bypass all local bans on site browsing. You can download the free version of the program on the main page of the official website, in the "Start Free Premium Trial" header.
Tor Browser
Well, this is no longer a plugin, but a whole browser. And in our case, another excellent option for bypassing the blocking of Roskomnadzor. The Tor Browser Bundle includes the Firefox Portable browser, the Vidalia control panel, and the Tor module itself. The combination of all these components allows you to create anonymous queries when surfing. Here's a small instruction:
- Download the archive from the torproject.org website using our link.
- After extracting the contents, we will have a Portable version of the program, which consists of several folders and the "Start Tor Browser" file. We launch it and soon a control panel appears in front of us.
- Firefox also starts at this point. This is a familiar browser, which differs only in the presence of the Tor module we need so much.
- After starting the browser, go to its settings and select the "Network" tab. We make the necessary changes and surf without any problems.
"Connected to the Tor network!" - status informing about the correct launch of the program. It should be noted that there have been many complaints about this method lately. In particular, users have reported doubts about complete anonymity when using it. Nevertheless, the alternative is quite good.
Public proxy addresses
Google kindly provides public proxy servers that allow you to surf the Internet safely and, most importantly, anonymously. Basically, this is one of the simplest and most convenient methods of gaining access to prohibited sites. It will help even if the official site of the room is blocked, so use it to your health.
Google Public DNS:
- 8.8.8.8.
- 8.8.8.4.
IPv6 addresses:
- 2001:4860:4860::8888.
- 2001:4860:4860::8844.
Proxy setup instructions
You must clear the cookie before configuring the proxy!
Opera
- We select "General settings" in the settings.
- At the top in the tabs, click on "Advanced" and select the "Network" section.
- In the menu that appears, click on "Proxy servers":
- Open the menu in the browser toolbar.
- Select "Settings" and click "Show advanced settings".
- Scroll down to the "Network" section and click the "Change proxy settings" button.
- You will see a dialog box with Internet Options. In it you need to open the "Connections" tab.
- In the section "Configuring local network parameters" click on the "Network settings" button.
- In the window that opens, uncheck the automatic settings and, conversely, put them next to "Use a proxy server for local connections" and "Do not use a proxy server for local addresses". Enter the proxy address and port. Here's an example:
Mozilla Firefox
- Go to "Settings", then "Advanced".
- Select the "Network" tab and in the "Connection" section click on the "Configure" button.
- If you know that the proxy supports all protocols, select "Manual configuration", enter the required data and check the box next to "Use this proxy server for all protocols":
Virtual Private Network (VPN)
VPN is a technology that provides one or more network connections over a separate network. Take the VPN Tunnel service as an example. Instructions:
- Go to the service website and click on "Order Now".
- Several tariffs will appear in front of you. The difference between them is that Premium allows you to use the service both from a mobile device and from a PC. If you intend to use VPN exclusively on PC, go for the simple package. If VPN is needed for mobile devices too - Premium.
- Next, you need to select the term for ordering the service. In principle, it is best to order for a month and, if everything goes well, next time buy for a longer period.
- We enter all the necessary data and pay using PayPal.
- You will receive a VPN login and password to your mail, which must be entered when entering your personal account on the VPN Tunnel website.
- On the site you will find instructions for installing the client and a client for connecting. Users of this service recommend taking OpenVPN, since it allows you to switch to PPTP for free, while the return switch is paid.
- Download the application and enjoy your health!
Anonymizers and more
Finally, we note that the network has a huge number of anonymizers and web proxies that allow you to enter prohibited sites without installing any software.
Poker room comments
Recently, many Russian-speaking players have begun to often complain that providers have blocked the ability to enter poker rooms and, accordingly, grind. Over and over again, topics about the so-called Russian "Black Friday" began to appear on poker forums. Many players immediately wrote letters to the support service of their rooms in order to find out how the blocking of Roskomnadzor could affect the game and, in general, what's what. One of the first responses to appear on the network was PokerStars:
« We are aware of the situation in Russia. At this time, we do not believe this will affect our ability to serve Russian players. In this regard, we continue to work as usual».
It is owned and operated by a legal entity located in the Isle of Man (Crown of the United Kingdom). The company's activities are carried out in accordance with the laws and licenses of the Isle of Man, and only this legislation the company is guided by.
« We will certainly inform our players if changes occur in any jurisdiction that directly affect the players. We can assure you that your funds are always completely safe and that they will always be available to you for withdrawal if you so wish.
Our License Agreement clearly states that our services must not be used in jurisdictions where it is contrary to local laws. However, the measures taken by Roskomnadzor, and the subsequent inclusion of our site in the Unified Register of Banned Sites, do not affect the game in our poker room. We hope that this information will be useful to you.».
In turn, the support service said that they do not yet see ways to solve this problem. According to them, all questions should be asked to the provider. One of the users of the poker room did so, as a result of which he learned that access to the poker room was blocked by a court decision and nothing could be changed. The game room support, in turn, recommended to wait for official information on this matter.
What to do if the poker room is blocked?
Unfortunately, so far there is not a single working and at the same time 100% legal method of bypassing Roskomnadzor. There are only workers. This is a VPN that really allows you to bypass the grind ban. But can you use it and not be afraid to get banned from the poker room? You need to ask the support again. PokerStars responded as follows:
« We can confirm that PokerStars does not currently have a ban against players physically located in Russia and using an online service like the one you have described. Obviously this may change as we cannot guarantee future legal agreements or future changes to our rules.
However, to avoid any possible doubt, let us confirm that playing for real money in some countries (even if you use the service to try to hide your true location) * is * in violation of our rules.
Any attempt to circumvent the game restrictions by persons in a prohibited or limited jurisdiction is a violation of our rules. A circumvention attempt includes, but is not limited to, manipulating information used by PokerStars to locate your location and providing PokerStars with false or misleading information about your location or residence. To summarize, we inform you that you can use such a service only to enter the client program, but you cannot play the game».
It turns out that you cannot grind, but you can go in and withdraw your bankroll.
888 Poker Support:
« We would like to inform you that in accordance with our terms and conditions, we do not recommend using bypass programs. Please note that if you use such programs, you accept responsibility for your actions, and there is a possibility that your account will be blocked».
Finally, we note that using a VPN or other services that hide your real location can lead to the blocking of your account in a particular poker room, so do everything in moderation and wisely. Good luck!