Roskomnadzor still blocked Zello: for this, thousands of Amazon and Google addresses had to be entered into the registry

After a year of struggle, Roskomnadzor still managed to block the work of the Zello messenger through public IP. Zello is a very convenient push-to-talk walkie talkie with strong encryption. The radio is popular with Russian truckers, and the decision to block was made after activists used it to coordinate strikes against the introduction of the Plato system .

The fact of successful blocking was recognized by co-founder of the service, Alexei Gavrilov, in a commentary for the newspaper Vedomosti. He said that now the service is only available via VPN.

The Zello blocking epic began on April 10, 2017, when Roskomnadzor initiated a procedure for restricting access to information systems of Zello Inc. First, Roskomnadzor demanded that the owners of Zello provide information for inclusion in the register of information dissemination organizers - this is a mandatory requirement for listening to conversations of users by law enforcement agencies. But the company not only ignored the requirements of the supervisory authority, but also wrote about it in its blog , and also published a letter received from Roskomnadzor ( pdf ).

“The requirements of Article 10.1 of Law 149-FZ are not only absurd from a technical point of view, but also contrary to the principles of Zello, so we will not fulfill them. The formal reason for the adoption of this law was the fight against terrorism, but in fact it can be used to selectively block any unwanted Internet service. Earlier, with reference to this law, the social network Linkedin was blocked, another goal was Zello, tomorrow it could be blocked by Twitter, Facebook or Telegram, ”the company explained in the official blog.
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The company recommended that users download the latest version of the PC application , from the App Store or Google Play and install one of the VPN creation applications on the phone. She hoped that the work of the mobile radio will continue after blocking.

So it happened. Despite the requirements of Roskomnadzor, Google and Apple did not delete the application from their catalogs - and the service continued to operate normally, said Alexei Gavrilov on the Tochka radio program on April 1, 2018. Even without using a VPN, the walkie talkie worked perfectly for a long time.

Zello has tools to bypass locks. Alexey Gavrilov says that they appeared even after student protests in Venezuela in 2014, when Zello was also blocked there. Therefore, most users did not even notice the blocking - the service worked well enough until November 2017, when Roskomnadzor made additional efforts to filter the IP addresses used by Zello. Every day he began to block dozens of new IP addresses. After that, crashes began. Alexey said that over the past year the number of Russian users has decreased by about 50%, but the intensity of use per user has not changed.

Despite blocking 4482 IP addresses of Amazon , the Zello service used more and more new addresses - and continued to work despite failures. Roskomnadzor delivered the final blow in March 2018, when it decided to block almost 15 million IP addresses, including 13.5 million Amazon addresses . The American company believed in this threat - and asked Zello not to use its platform as a “shield” to bypass the locks. Then Zello switched to the Google platform. But Roskomnadzor continued fan-blocking. From April 6, he began to systematically block the addresses of Google. On April 11, the regulator reported that it blocked 286 IP addresses and 285 domains owned by Google. The Office explained the inclusion of prohibited resources in the registry by using the Zello application.

Thus, said Alexei Gavrilov, today Zello can only be used via VPN.

A year ago, the number of active users of the free application in Russia, according to the company itself, exceeded 400 thousand people. Apparently, now there are about 200 thousand left. It is used for mutual assistance of drivers on the roads, search and rescue operations, in taxi services, for helping citizens to law enforcement agencies, organizing peaceful protests, discussing socially important topics, searching for friends and communication. Zello accounts for about 10% of Russia in Russia.

The story of Zello is revealing as an example of what might happen if Telegram is blocked (open court hearing on this issue will take place today ). In case of Telegram blocking, convenient proxy services like Connecto Proxy are launched. The usual VPNs are still effective. Among GeekTimes audience, about 66.8% already know how to bypass a possible Telegram block .

UPD. The court decided to block Telegram in Russia . The decision is subject to immediate execution, the video .

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