Russia blocks Viber in latest attempt to censor communications

Russian telecommunications watchdog Roskomnadzor has blocked the Viber encrypted messaging app, used by hundreds of millions worldwide, for violating the country’s legislation.

“Access to the Viber service is restricted due to the violation of the requirements of Russian legislation for organizers of information dissemination,” Russia’s internet regulator said in a press statement.

“Compliance with the requirements is necessary to prevent threats of using the messenger for terrorist and extremist purposes, recruiting citizens to commit them, selling drugs, as well as in connection with the posting of illegal information.”

Viber can be used on both desktop and mobile platforms. As of this month, Viber for Android has been downloaded over 1 billion times from Google Play Store, while its iOS counterpart has over 744,000 ratings on Apple’s App Store.

This comes after a Moscow court ordered Viber to pay a 1 million robles fine in June 2023 for failing to remove what Russia described as illegal content, including information on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

​In March 2023, Russia banned government and state agencies from using multiple foreign private messaging applications, including Discord, Microsoft Team, Telegram, Threema, Viber, WhatsApp, and WeChat.

In August of this year, Roskomnadzor also restricted access to the Signal encrypted messaging service for violating Russian anti-terrorism and anti-extremism legislation.

Multiple virtual private network (VPN) apps were also banned in three waves: one in January 2020, one in June 2021, and the most recent in December 2021.

Apple was also forced to remove 25 VPN apps (including NordVPN, Proton VPN, Red Shield VPN, Planet VPN, Hidemy.Name VPN, Le VPN, and PIA VPN) from the Russian App Store in August 2024 at the request of Roskomnadzor because they were used to access “illegal content.”

A Viber spokesperson was not immediately available for comment when contacted by BleepingComputer earlier today.