Foreign messaging apps banned on Russian government orgs

The Russian government initiated the banning of several foreign messaging apps from their government-owned organisations and state agencies earlier this week.

The mandate is under a new Russian law, “On information, information technology, and information protection,” of Article 10, parts 8-10. This newly passed law prohibits Russian government agencies from using and installing information exchange systems that originate from foreign companies.

Based on reports, the law establishes a ban for numerous Russian organisations on foreign messengers for information systems and computer programs managed by foreign individuals that are designed and used for exchanging messages.

Moreover, the government also bans exchanging messages exclusively between their users, which the sender designates as the recipient of messages and does not provide for placement by internet users public information on the internet.

 

The Russian ban includes well-known messaging apps that are wildly used worldwide.

 

According to investigations, the confirmed messaging apps banned by Russian government agencies are Discord, MS Teams, Skype for Business, Snapchat, Telegram, Threema, Viber, WhatsApp, and WeChat.

However, the popular Zoom app, one of the world’s leading messaging applications, is not on the list of banned applications. The encrypted messaging service called Sigla is also excluded from the list.

The Russian government has previously requested that some of the earlier-mentioned messaging tools, such as Discord and Telegram, should remove false information from their platform.

Unfortunately, some experts claim that the current ban is not the Russian government’s effort to persuade their citizens’ opinions. The Russian government only wants to avoid data leaks of sensitive information through these messaging apps.

The current geopolitical conflict against Ukraine has made Russia cautious and limited to deploying foreign software within its critical sectors to mitigate the chances of sensitive data reaching unwanted entities.

Cybersecurity experts claimed that these recent bans on messaging applications on government-owned agencies are part of Russia’s efforts to secure their privacy and stop the spread of disinformation amongst its citizens.

Zoom is the last wildly-used messaging app operating in Russian-owned government agencies.