Roskomnadzor reported that Viber messenger blocked in Russia for failure to comply with the requirements of Russian legislation.
“Access to the Viber service is limited due to violation of the requirements of Russian legislation for organizers of the dissemination of information, the implementation of which is necessary to prevent threats of using the messenger for terrorist and extremist purposes, recruiting citizens to commit them, selling drugs, as well as in connection with the posting of illegal information »reports the department’s telegram channel.
Viber messenger (full name – “Rakuten Viber Messenger”) was first launched in December 2010. In 2014, the company was acquired by the Japanese holding Rakuten. In January 2022, the owner of the messenger, Viber Media S.à rl, registered in Luxembourg, opened a representative office in Russia to comply with the law on “landing”. According to the corresponding RKN list, the owner of Viber fulfilled all the main obligations of a foreign entity under this law: in addition to the representative office in Russia, he opened a personal account on the RKN website, as well as an electronic form for Russian users to contact him on his Internet resources.
From July 1, 2018, information dissemination organizers (IDI), as part of the implementation of the so-called “Yarovaya package” are required to store user data (correspondence, audio and video messages) for six months and provide it at the request of intelligence services. Currently, several hundred companies are included in the register.
In law “About information” (Article 10.1) ORI is a person carrying out activities to ensure the functioning of information systems or computer programs for receiving, transmitting, delivering, processing electronic messages from Internet users. ORIs are required to notify the RKN about the start of their activities as such.
According to Art. 13.31 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, failure of the ORI to fulfill this obligation entails the imposition of an administrative fine on legal entities in the amount of 100 to 300 thousand rubles; for a repeated offense, a fine of 500 thousand to 1 million rubles may follow.
In June 2023, Viber was fined by the court 1 million rubles for failure to remove information containing false information about a special military operation (SVO), and in March of this year – 800 thousand rubles for failure to remove content prohibited in Russia.
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