Russia disrupts messenger service Signal and YouTube

Russia recently blocked the messenger service Signal due to alleged violations of the law. The Russian authority responsible, Roskomnadzor in Moscow, justified this rigorous step by stating that Signal was not complying with the legal measures required to prevent terrorism and extremism. Signal uses end-to-end encryption, which makes it difficult for the Russian government to intercept communications.

On Friday, Signal users had been complaining all day about connection problems and a lack of availability of messenger services within and to Russia. Several media outlets reported outages and referred to the Sboj.rf service, which collects reports of disruptions on websites and reports on the connection problems. The reporting portal itself is also currently unavailable.

Netblocks is also currently reporting the disruptions on X. The backends of the Signal messaging app are apparently still restricted with most internet providers in Russia. Signal offers a workaround to bypass the blockages. The blocks can be largely overridden via TLS proxy servers, as Signal describes in its instructions.

YouTube also disrupted

On Thursday, users reported that YouTube was working more slowly and that videos were difficult to download. The Russian authorities have not yet officially commented on this, but have stated in recent days that they have targeted the video service because it allegedly refuses to remove extremist videos.

Russia had previously blocked major social networks such as X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook, which are now only accessible via protected connections (VPN) in Russia.

The messenger service Signal has been around since 2014 and is characterized by its strong end-to-end encryption. Signal attaches great importance to data protection and advertises that it does not collect or store any user data.

(nie)