It was developed in the mid 1990s in the U.S. However, TOR was political from the beginning. VPNs, or virtual private networks, were developed when companies understood they needed a secure way to share data between different offices, and to allow employees to access sensitive files remotely and safely. Many technologies the users use today to avoid censorship were developed as commercial tools. But the significance of this development is much bigger. TOR was Russia’s next natural target because the software allows users to access websites and pages blocked by the authorities. Apple has already been forced to turn it off in China, Belarus, Colombia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkmenistan, Uganda and the Philippines, citing ‘regulatory requirements’ in those countries. Private Relay was designed to encrypt all the traffic leaving the user’s device so no one can intercept it. And then Apple turned off its Private Relay service in Russia. In September, eight more popular VPNs were blocked. In the summer, Roskomnadzor blocked the first two VPNs, then the popular browser Opera killed support for its VPN.

Throughout 2021, Russia’s Internet censors mounted a systematic attack on technologies that could be used by the country’s users to bypass censorship.

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