Tag: censorship

Russia blocks 800K Amazon sites in Telegram crackdown, disables legitimate ones in the process

Russia this week blocked hundreds of thousands of Amazon Web Services (AWS) sites in an apparent attempt to eliminate the secure Telegram messaging service from its borders. In the process, however, the government also disabled a number of legitimate websites operating in the country as well. Telegram is a service akin to WhatsApp that’s rapidly replacing the latter because messages sent over it are encrypted and not linked to Facebook data sharing. Russian, however, doesn’t want its citizens using Telegram, presumably because government can’t spy on them then–although the official reasoning is it’s an anti-terrorism method because Telegram officials is skirting new laws requiring the decryption of messages. Earlier this month, a Russian court officially blocked Telegram from being used in the country. On Monday, Russia’s federal censor directed the country’s ISPs to block hundreds of thousands of AWS IP addresses that were being used to bypass the Telegram ban, […]