Kaspersky Secure Connection

2022: Work stoppage in Russia

On November 8, 2022, representatives of Kaspersky Lab announced that their Secure Connection VPN application was shutting down in Russia. VPN will also disappear from the various complex products that Kaspersky offers in Russia.

As the company adds, other countries will not be affected by changes in the work of Kaspersky Secure Connection. For users outside Russia, the set of available functions and VPN servers will remain the same.

They will turn off Secure Connection in Russia in stages in order to "minimize inconvenience for current users," said representatives of Kaspersky Lab.

The free version of the application will be the first to stop working. It will be available until November 15, 2022. After this period, it will not be possible to use a free product in Russia.

The paid version will be sold until the end of December 2022. If the user bought the application and activated it in his personal account, the company clarifies, then the VPN will be available until the end of the license or the current subscription - in most cases it is one year^[1].

2019: The beginning of blocking sites banned in Russia

In early July 2019, it became known that the Kaspersky Secure Connection VPN service began to block sites banned in Russia. The service was connected to the prohibited information registry to filter users' access to resources in it.

We confirm that Kaspersky Secure Connection has connected to the Federal State Information System (Federal State Information System containing a register of sites prohibited in the Russian Federation), the press service of Roskomnadzor told Interfax.

When you try to access a blocked site through Kaspersky Secure Connection, a "stub" message appears stating that access to the page is restricted on the basis of the law "On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection."

Kaspersky Secure Connection service interface

At the end of March 2019, Roskomnadzor for the first time demanded that 10 VPN services block access to sites from the register of prohibited information. Among those who received these requirements, only one company, Kaspersky Lab, agreed to fulfill them.

VPN services and anonymizers were given 30 working days to connect to the registry. Roskomnadzor can block them on the territory of Russia.

In addition to the Kaspersky Lab service, notifications were sent to NordVPN, Hide My Ass!, Hola VPN, Openvpn, VyprVPN, ExpressVPN, TorGuard, IPVanish and VPN Unlimited.

In case of refusal, Roskomnadzor may block the VPN service in the Russian Federation. According to [[Vedomosti|Vedomosti], Roskomnadzor does not yet plan to block VPN services that have not connected to the registry. Instead, the department wants to punish companies with fines.

At the same time, in early June 2019, the head of Roskomnadzor, Aleskander Zharov, announced the blocking of nine VPN services within a month, which refused to connect to the register of sites banned in Russia.^[2]

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