Dear friends,
I know! I know! You want maps. I will try to post one later tonight!
Right now I want to share a few things with you and ask a few questions.
First, accessing Russian websites. I notice that in the US a lot of .ru and .su domains are blocked. Today I had to use a VPN to go through Israel to access a page in Russia (https://www.vesti.ru). But my VPN does not offer any outlets in Russia.
Question: does anybody know of a strong, solid and quick VPN with Russian outlets?
Next, I am swamped with emails. Forgive me, but I am physically totally exhausted (it’s not just work, it is also being the object of hate, that is quite exhausting and I don’t wish that feeling on anybody). So I am sorry, but unless your email is marked “IMPORTANT AND URGENT” I might not reply to it. I will READ them all, but that’s the most I can promise.
I recently discovered the website The Gateway Pundit (turns out they used an article of mine recently) and I found out that, according to TGP, Duckduckgo also deranks and censors. As you might now, Google has massively deranked the Saker blog, and I don’t care since our traffic does not depend on search engines, but I do want to use a search engine which I could halfway trust when I need to look up something. So my next question to you is:
Question: which is the least bad, the least corrupt, search engine out there? It would have to be one physically and legally based outside Zone A.
Next, I was told by an IT friend that the messenger Signal is not truly free and open source (FOSS) software. Here my questions do you are:
Question: do you know of a 100% FOSS messenger, including its internal encryption mechanisms?
That’s it on my end.
By later this afternoon, I hope to bring you an update and, yes, a map :-)
Hugs and cheers
Andrei
I’m using CyberGhost to read blocked sites in Germany. It has a bunch of servers, including one in Moscow. Loads RT, Sputniknews, Southfront, vesti, RIA, etc. I alternate between connecting through Russia and Mexico. But there are lots of other countries to choose from. It’s not free though, but worked fine so far.
No. Qwant has announced the delisting of ALL Russian media. RT.com etc will not come up on Qwant search results. Hard pass on Qwant
Bitmessage is supposed to be open and technologically sound according to reaction.la, which is where I discovered this blog from (in the comments)
+Saker
I use yandex a have no problem. Perfect performance (maybe being an expat in Central America has something to do with it. Their attitude toward Russia is another topic. Their “Left” is a lost cause). I also use Qwant
https://www.qwant.com/?l=en
and Brave (time to time). Google is the WORST. Mozilla not so bad. then again I am in Central America.
Kapersky VPN is what I use, and used Proton before. Both do well
Have all my greetings and force to overcome all hindrance and negative influencers.
As for search engine, how about etools.ch?
I am in Turkey. I have no problem accessing:
https://www.vesti.ru
https://www.rt.com
https://sputniknews.com
https://ukraina.ru
If your VPN has Turkish nodes, you should be OK
searx.ninja or startpage would do the search job. “..Searx is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from more than 70 search services. Users are neither tracked nor profiled. Additionally, searx can be used over Tor for online anonymity…”
https://searx.github.io/searx/
The Yandex browser often displays what others won’t. ExpressVPN through Georgia works well.
I use Astrill VPN. It has a couple of servers in Russia and has a “stealth” mode tro prevent blocking from your ISP. I’ve tried NordVPN but i quickly abandoned it.
As for search engines, i use Startpage.com. I have not noticed any censoring of search results.
I reach you by yandex as southfront.org too.
I use Torguard for VPN and I just checked; they have one server in Russia (Moscow). Cannot say anything else about it but might be worth looking into.
Kaspersky Lab (/kæˈspɜːrski/; Russian: Лаборатория Касперского, tr. Laboratoriya Kasperskogo) is a Russian multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider headquartered in Moscow, Russia[1], and operated by a holding company in the United Kingdom.
I switched to their anti-virus because Norton was too intrusive (always selling something), but Kaspersky was worse.
Give this a try:
https://privatevpn.com
They have 2 servers in Russia: Moscow and Krasnoyarsk.
They’re reasonably priced and they don’t keep logs.
Good luck.
Update for Mulvad VPN:
I can get RT news on Moldova and Albania, and Canada. All others say: “not available in your country”.
Another thing people should be worried about is the entire operating system. Can Windows really be trusted with bill gates at the helm? Their frequent updates which restart your computer in the middle of the night, taking up to 20 minutes sometimes, could very likely be a government agency downloading all of your files, history, etc. I recommend Linux. It’s a little techy but once you get the hang of it you will wonder why you ever used Windows.
Thanks.
The Saker is a long time Linux user as am I. Cheers
Brave as a browser,… F-secure as a VPN.
Hi Andrei, I use Psiphon on my phone. By choosing server region Serbia I can quickly access both vesti.ru & Tass. But not via any other server region including India.
Hi
I use VyprVPN by Goldenfrog. Based in Switzerland with Servers all over the world. Very reliable.
Cheers:)
Same here: Threema as messenger and vypr as vpn. Both swiss based and very reliable. Russland works, too.
You can sign up in Threema without disclosing any personal data or contacts. And it saves the data on your device, not on the server. Downside of this aspect: If you use multiple devices, it gets complicated…
In most cases, you don’t need a VPN. Blocking is done because the DNS server provided by your ISP is lying for russian domains. Changing, in your OS or in your browser, the IP of DNS server to a russian DNS server will be sufficient. By example, you can use one of these IP: https://dns.yandex.com/
For changing the IP of DNS Server, you can follow Google manual, using just differents IP, like Yandex.
https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using
You are correct. In Portugal bittorrent and now Russian sites are only blocked at the DNS level. For over a year I have used two russian servers from the list at https://servers.opennic.org/ I can view all russian sites without a VPN.
I have consistently used ProtonVPN. Out of curiosity I just connected to the “Russia” server and checked, and Google thinks I’m in Estonia (YouTube routed to EE, Google Maps puts me in Estonia). Some IP Address lookup site put me in France.
That said, I can read get to vesti.ru. I have read their reports of collaborating with the coup attempt in Belarus, plus Switzerland’s recent betrayal of neutrality makes Proton seem less reliable now.
As for the rest, I know Signal is definitely a no-go and released some Jan 6 texts if I’m not mistaken. I would definitely use Telegram but find it odd that I can’t even sign in without putting in my phone number.
No idea on search engines. Been using DuckDuckGo and none the wiser.
Could you please update us with what you find? I went to Proton on your recommendation years ago.
And since YouTube has banned everything, I need a new way to watch Большая Игра which has been invaluable the last few weeks.
Nord VPN is without doubt the best one. Outside Fourteen Eyes, safe Panama jurisdiction. Independently audited. Fast and reliable. Excellent support. (Just checked – no problem to connect vestii.ru using their Polish server).
I advise against VPNs built in browsers.
I would recommend as well Brave browser and Brave engine search (Startpage is too much connected to Google, DuckDuck just showed true face). AV of your choice, however Kaspersky seems sensible.
Mail client Protonmail or similar.
I hope it helps a bit.
Qwant – The search engine that respects your privacy
Yandex
Qwant has delisted all Russian news sites. Cease using it asap.
+Nightvision
I guess it depends where you live (I am an expat here in Central America. Where are you?). I just used Qwant a while ago, RT’d it and RT functioned fine. TAAS and Sputnik too.
I use VPN which is part of McAfee anti virus package. It has a choice of about 25 countries, I’ve been viewing RT and other Russain sites (kremlin, Russian MFA etc) via Colombia – no EU countries or US work as a router to Russian chanels. I was using NordVPN before – small monthly fee – but stopped when I got a new computer with the Mcaffee pack included.
Yandex may be your best search engine.
HoxxVPN Browser Extension for free. You can choose your location, including Russia. Fast and simple.
Here’s some news:
The Turks are evacuating diplomats from their embassy in Ukraine from Kyiv to Chernivtsi for the time being. The Turks know something.
In the first batch of NLAW, Javelin and Stinger MANPADS sent from Poland, several dozen complexes were missing in Kyiv. Where they went, no one knows. With subsequent batches, things were even worse – a maximum of half of the cargo reaches its destination. The Poles refer to the problems of logistics, because weapons for terrorists are transported in civilian vehicles – ordinary cars and trucks, fearing the planes and helicopters of the Russian Aerospace Forces patrolling the area.
In view of the fact that the RF Armed Forces, as well as the people’s militia and the Armed Forces of the DPR and LPR, captured a large number of FGM-148 Javelin man-portable anti-tank missile systems (ATGM), it was decided to issue a brochure – instructions in Russian.
I have heard that Brave is a good search engine.
https://swisscows.com/
this is a ok search engine, vpn from Russia is not possible anymore i believe.
Russia banned vpn servers a while back so at best a vpn provider will have a virtual Russian server, Surfshark have even removed the virtual Russian servers.
https://proprivacy.com/vpn/comparison/best-vpn-russia
in here they say Surfshark is no1 provider for Russian vpn but that is wrong, no Russian ip adress on Sshark, goes directly from Romania to Serbia, no other countries that starts with R🤷♂️ the other providers he mentions i can not say anything about since i have never used them, but his accuracy on Sshark makes me doubt the 4 others too.
Surfshark is cheap and fast, my subscription ends in 2024 and cost me ca 2$ pr month.
Try going to “The Conservative Treehouse” [ https://theconservativetreehouse.com ] and ping the admins at
TheLastRefuge@reagan.com
They just set up their own servers and such to be completely free of DDG, Google, etc.
May have something in common with you. And some advice.
You are being cited there {saker.is} for your Ukraine coverage in the comments. So they will probably know who you are
http://jimstone.is
Duckduckgo has announced it will now censor like Google. But there is always THIS http://www.yandex.ru/ (just search in English, it will work) or THIS http://www.qwant.com/ . There are more but those two are what I typically use when it’s not duck duck. The first link is every bit as powerful as Google and turns up stuff that’s hopeless elsewhere. I have used that since I gave up on Google, not only after the war.
To get good search back takes effort. This is the least effort for the best product and if so inclined you can host your own instance.
https://searx.me/
For the haters, how about a T-shirt with the logo “Wanted: Saddam Hussein’s WMD” under a picture of Colon Bowel and his Magic Vial?
The quickest baseline test you can perform right now on any search engine is just type “RT” into the search. The ones that have completely banned/delisted Russian sites will not show you Russia Today i.e. rt.com in their search. This includes engines like Qwant which have COMPLETELY DELISTED Russian sites and will not show RT. But Brave Search amongst others does show them.
With that said this should not be the only category because DuckDuckGo does not completely delist the sites yet has announced it will be lowering them in the rankings so it still should be be used. But ones that completely delist them like Qwant are definitely on the ‘Do Not Use’ list.
Saker,
I use the Yandex search engine & PureVPN and they work great.
PureVPN has a Moscow server in the locations list.
Hope this helps.
Proton VPN has a Russia
As for a messenger, I’ve been using Tox for years now. It’s hard to say how secure anything is these days, but I think this is about as good as it gets. It’s decentralised and encrypted. It can even be run through Tor.
Also, i just put thegatewaypundit.com into DuckDuckGo and first 8(!) results were all from the website, so I don’t know what that post was about. 9th result was their facebook. (Maybe everyone can try and see if they’re getting different results for some reason?) Can’t say I’ve had any problems with Duck.
Proton VPN has a Russian connect option.
1. ExpressVPN is what I use on my Desktop and Mobile. I’m have it set to India, and have had no problems.
2. Allegedly, Brave Browser is the safest/most fair. I started using it yesterday, can’t report much on it, but it doesn’t collect your data, and so far it works
Cheers!
Word on the air waves is that western Ukraine air fields have been decomissioned and operations there should begin shortly.
Reports here are that the Russians are doing so bad that they can afford to free up some resources and start to liberate western Ukraine.
There are some democrats that are going to go down in flames over their own misinformation soon.
proton vpn claims to have 14 servers in Petersburg
lists 63 locations – has a kill switch and secure core whatever that means
Proton is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland
kasparsky.com states “private international company with the holding company domiciled in the UK.” claims to have HQ in London, usa, Moscow Turkey etc.
In 2013 kasparsky announces its cooperation with interpol
In 2015 kasparsky lab employees implanted micro chips in there hands
Tried it for a while believing it was Russian and then deleted it as personally i found it very buggy
SnowD ( https://snowd.com/ ) named after snowdon claims two servers in Russia (Petersburg and Moscow). Its simple, it works, but no where near as solid as proton. They claim “We live in different cities from Vancouver to Russia” gives a contact address at Punane tn 56, Tallinn, 13619. Estonia – whatever that means
Express vpn is a large organisation and comes up first on a google search so I stay well clear.
Im using Proton as a good fit for amateur leval but more then that is above my pay grade !
I am using Threema:
My friend who is living in serbian part of Kosovska Mitrovica recommend to me Threema
Threema. Its a swiss made Messenger.
Nato is monitoring complete communication of serbian citizen.
‘Threema has proven to be safest
Andrei,
Thank you so much for giving of yourself.
You are not alone.
I look at this life as a battle between the light and darkness.
We have good enemies.
Old Toad
I’ve been using/testing Brave search (https://search.brave.com) and it seems to be doing OK so far.
Admittedly, can be a bit difficult to identify when things don’t show up in response to a search, but direct searches seem to work there.
Good day,
I am not sure. This search engine aggregates bing, yahoo, google and some others. Sometimes the return is virtually empty. But if you go to google of duckduckgo you will see lots of links. here is the link
search.disroot.org/
disroot.org is opensource and for the most part FOSS. I belong to FSF.org FSC.org
however not a computer geek.
Anti-Spiegel of Thomas Röper is under attac.
https://www.anti-spiegel.ru/
You can still see it, but all comments of the last days disappeared, not possible to write new ones and there are no new articles.
PureVPN thru Russian server (ping a little bad, in US west coast)
Brave browser in private window ( not sure if this matters)
Have been watching different vids and reading articles from multiple .ru sites
https://www.vesti.ru/article/2688045 as an example
http://government.ru/en/ and here
http://en.kremlin.ru/ and here
Is there a specific site you are looking for?
I am not having any problems getting to various sites in Russia, just a bad ping, connection is not the greatest.
Hi Andrei,
First of all thank you so much for doing what you do and keep people like me informed of what would otherwise be impossible to find in the vast swamps of todays media landscape. I can imagine it must be a very demanding task indeed. I have been watching your blog closely for quite a while and i have learned so much so again, thank you!
Concerning your question, the Brave browser/engine is propably one of the best out there cause privacy and anti censorship are at it’s core from the start. One of the founders co-created mozilla’s firefox but quit because of the company’s invasive business model and started his own company based on security and privacy.
For Vpn i am using psiphon cause it is open source and free (working on my phone though) and works fine even for the sites that are very actively being blocked in the EU now.
A good night to you sir
I´ve been told by IT people that Session is the best Messaging service that don´t collect any info on you, not even phone number. https://getsession. org/
Check with your guys though.
These things I command you, that ye love one another.
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. As Russia does for the 8 years of suffering.
If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.
If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;
Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”
Forgive them for they know not what they do.
Email
https://protonmail.com/
https://swisscows.email/
ProtonVPN has a server in Russia.
Vpn
https://protonvpn.com/vpn-servers/
I believe it’s a meta-search engine that uses bing. But it’s anonymous and the results are not censored.
Search
https://swisscows.com/
This is a decentralised chat app. Blockchain based. Completely anonymous. There is no central server. There is no history of messages stored anywhere in the cloud. Encrypted. It cannot be shut down or censored. The founder of wolframalpha is affiliated with the project.
Messenger
https://nmobile.nkn.org/
Direct link to apk for android users. No need to have a google account.
https://github.com/nknorg/nMobile/releases
https://github.com/nknorg/nMobile/releases/download/v1.2.5(253)/nmobile-v1.2.5_253.apk
Another project I’m keeping an eye on. They use the term email but it’s more of a chat app. Each user must have a raidamail account. It wasn’t possible to send an email to an external address like gmail the last time I tried it.
https://start.raidamail.com/
I use https://brave.com/ , is good if you value privacy, search engine is also ok
Telegram is the best and it Russian :) Saker
Encrypted Messaging Apps are not 100% secure, because messages are stored encrypted on central servers. Even criminals with very expensive ultra secure phones get busted, because their messages are stored centrally on a server.
The most secure thing is to make encrypted phone calls, not messaging.
That is the case. Any application either server or cloud based is hackable. Blockchain hype should be avoided. P2P is what you are looking for. Open source and not connected to a company (they all change course when they get popular). The only culprit is that most P2P solutions are still ip address dependent, so still trackable like anything else.
So a good working solution is Jami and in the pipeline Iris based on GUNdb. Working on the ip issue.
Just started using one called swisscows which is based in Switzerland which seems to be reasonably free of “bias”.
Not outside Zone A entirely, but certainly better than DDG which had been my default up to the change.
Message to Andrei. Check out SurfShark as a VPN useable to access Russian sites.
There is only one and it is Brave. Brave is the only independent search engine out there. Forget the rest.
Search Engine: Yandex
tox.chat is the only secure, decentralized, open-source messenger i have much experience with. there’s also briar, but currently there’s no desktop version. if you don’t need end-to-end encryption IRC over TLS is your best bet imo (signal is not just “not truly open-source,” they collect social graphs and almost certainly forward them to 5eyes or corporate intel. so does every messenger that makes you sign in with a phone number, by definition — the phone number address space is too small to be meaningfully hashed; some like whatsapp also spy on your contacts list)
don’t use vpns for security or censorship evasion (unless it’s one you run yourself); they are a networking primitive, not a security one. instead you should configure tor to use an RF exit node if you care at all about privacy, otherwise just use any random HTTPS or SOCKS proxy (“russia web proxy” will probably turn up links, tho you usually have to try five or ten IPs before you find one that works)
(the incantation for the tor configuration file should be `ExitNodes {ru} StrictNodes 0`, based off what i use to get into gdpr-unfriendly american sites from europe)
For years, I’ve been using NordVPN but I noticed no servers in Russia quite a while back
Browser: Brave
Search engine: I ditched duckduckgo some months ago, I use google at work (but only for work) and brave at home
Messenger: I’ve been using Wire for years, it has opened its source code (client and server) some time ago and you don’t need to give any private info for setting up an account, just a dummy address email. The claim is that they keep very little info about you. I only started using it to get away from whatsapp and other security disaster platforms.
Andrei,
I have been searching for a long time, and the only messenger that seems promising is called “Session”.
It is open-source, decentralized, encrypted, does not need a phone number or registration, and is using onion-routing (like TOR) to pass messages to protect anonymity. This means that every text message goes through three intermediaries (therefore, encrypted 4 times), before it reaches the recipient.
They say that any chain is a strong as its weakest link, and any platform that relies on a centralized server is, by default, a week one.
For one thing, even if they use encryption, they can monitor all the metadata (sender, recipient, date/time, frequency) and can create a pretty accurate profile; this, combined with open source information (think Facebook), they can find a lot of information. For example, services exist that can comb over 100 social media platforms for relevant information.
Second, centralized platforms have to obey local laws to operate. It only takes a judge’s order to ask for information, as it happens repeatedly with ProtonMail, and they are obliged to hand over everything they have. Again, even if the chats themselves are encrypted, your whole network of friends will be exposed—and then extra information can be harvested from Google and friends.
I am no expert at how well-implemented the “Session” platform is but they have passed 3rd party auditing. In practice it works really fast, even though it is just plain-vanilla for now.
Audio calls are coming; it took longer because they had to work to reduce latency as the calls themselves will use onion-routing, as well.
For now, there are only a few thousands relay nodes in their network, mostly concentrated in a handful of countries, but it is expected to grow as more people start using the platform. Even with this limitation, I have seen that the app tries to route messages through different countries and political alliances to avoid honeypots and timestamp techniques.
It looks promising, but I am no expert. If anyone knows better, I would like to listen to their input.
https://getsession.org/
Dear Andrei,
I use protonvpn and it covers Russia quite well. It is Swiss based, but they are so far keeping neutral. They also offer a very nice safe / encrypted mail service through protonmail.com
Best regards.
Giovanni
Try Chinese search engine Baidu (百度）when desperate:
https://www.baidu.com
Kaspersky Premium for antivirus and VPN, has Russian server, Yandex browser, search and email. Perfect combination since I watch a lot of football (soccer) on free feeds and Yandex finds them, no other search engine does. Added bonus is that Yandex autotranslate function is excellent (since I don’t speak Russian).
I use Startpage for routine searches and to see what the powers that be want me to see. For all practical purposes Startpage is Google with all its censored results, allegedly minus the Google tracking.
I use Yandex if I’m looking for Russian sites or uncensored search results.
On FOSS, well Snowden uses Signal.
https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/how-secure-is-signal-it-s-good-enough-for-edward-snowden-so-good-enough-for-you-1757596-2021-01-10
Or these possible choices: https://www.geckoandfly.com/20552/encrypted-secure-message-chat/
12 Free Encrypted & Decentralized Messenger For iOS And Android
Updated: January 5, 2022 / Home » Computer and Internet Security » Encryption, Password & Recovery
As far as I know Threema Messanger is “FOSS”
ProtonVPN serves me well :)
Saker, this is one of the most practical threads I’ve ever seen.
Please do us a favor and do a follow up post on what tools you end up choosing and/or what were the top nominees and why.
Realistically, I can’t explore them all and do all the research. Realistically, I would only spend a half hour or so changing my tools. So. . . your final recommendations would greatly help me.
From the comments so far, it looks like I might choose:
search engine: yandex
browser: brave
messenger: matrix
VPN: not sure, maybe Windscribe (because somebody mentioned it has a Russian server and I already use the free version).
Thanks!
I’ve gone to yandex.com as a search engine, but I don’t know where it is based. I know its origin is Russian.
YaCy —> https://yacy.net/
“Imagine if, rather than relying on the proprietary software of a large professional search engine operator, your search engine was run by many private computers which aren’t under the control of any one company or individual. Well, that’s what YaCy does!”
“Decentralized, all users are equal, no central, no search request storage, shared index.”
“Installation is independent from other peers. Define your own web index and starting your own web crawl.”
I hope it helps.
Used Protonmail for a while but for some reason that I don’t remember anymore stopped trusting them. Now running my own mail server on a cloud service. Mine is in Finland (through a German provider) but will probably move it out of there sometime in the future. The mail server I use is Mailcow. It was quite easy to set it up with Docker (you should find plenty of tutorials and documentation on the Internet about this). Not sure how safe it is but at least the server is yours and you can move it whenever you want. You can encrypt messages, which I don’t do at the moment, but you can do it. There’s a learning curve to all of this but I think it’s worth it. Using DuckDuck, but searching for my next web browser. Tried Qwant (French-based) before, but not entirely convinced.
Another alternative to Mailcow (also self-hosted, never tried it): https://mailinabox.email/
I have had good luck with Kaspersky for both antivirus and VPN. Not sure how much longer they will be allowed in the US. But for now they are working well.
Hello Andreï, take qwant.com. First run a comparative search, for example the words “graphene vaccin” in both Qwant and Google, compare the first page of results on each, and you will definitely adopt Qwant. It is only a search engine, additionally it doesn’t keep logs of your searches. It could have been obliged to censoreship since it is a little independent French company, but I just tried the word “Шереметьево” and most of the results are in from the Russian internet. CIA’s controlled Wikipedia doesn’t always tell the truth.
Dear Saker,
I remind you to consider physically moving to Russia while it is still a possibility. There is a real danger of such an escalation that you will be stuck there, imprisoned or worse.
Take care and think of both yourself and of your family while you can still act. Whichever way you are mixed, I don’t think there would be any “long knives night” campaigns for any imaginable groups of people in Russia in foreseeable future. This is sadly in contrary to much of the places across the Zone A.
I use Yandex browser and Telegram for messaging
Hi Andrei, I use CyberGhostVPN which has the outlets in Russia