Apple removes nearly 60 additional VPNs from its Russian App Store

Apple removed nearly 60 additional virtual private network (VPN) apps from its Russia App Store between July and September, significantly more than the 25 acknowledged by the Russian authorities, according to a report published on Tuesday by the Apple Censorship Project, which campaigns for greater transparency from Apple over such moves.

According to researchers at GreatFire, an organisation which monitors online censorship in China, data indicates that Apple silently removed nearly 60 VPN services from the Russia App Store between 4 July and 18 September, bringing the total number of VPN apps now unavailable in the country to 98.

The report suggests that the scale of online censorship in Russia is much greater than was previously acknowledged when Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media regulator, announced in early July that it would be blocking 25 VPN apps in the Russian App Store, including some of the world’s most popular services such as NordVPN, ExpressVPN and Proton VPN.

According to the report, more than 20% of the VPN apps tested by GreatFire researchers turned out to be blocked in Russia, despite the fact that Apple had made no public statement to that effect.

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