About 85,000 websites illegally blocked in Russia, study says

PanARMENIAN.Net - About 85,000 websites ended up on the Russian Internet blacklist over the past year, 98 percent of them blocked without a valid reason, a new study said, according to RIA Novosti.

Since November 2012, Russian state agencies have been able to block without a court order websites they deem to be promoting suicide or illegal drugs, or disseminating child porn.

The blacklisting is often done by a website’s numerical IP address, which is routinely shared by dozens of sites, all of which end up on the blacklist if one of them is banned.

The government blocked 741 IP addresses over the past year, according to a study by Rublacklist.net independent online watchdog.

Another 1,392 were blacklisted by their unique domain names, said the study, released Tuesday. Such bans are more precise, but are technically harder to implement.

More than 83,000 websites were collateral damage of bans by IP address, said Rublacklist.net, which tracks Internet blacklisting in Russia.

State telecom watchdog Roskomnadzor said last week that about 600 websites had been blacklisted by IP and another 3,400 by domain name.

The governmental agency did not comment on reports about innocent sites being blocked. Such sites are generally located outside Russia and do not target Russian audiences.