Monitoring websites applications Downradar and Sboy. rf have both revealed that service interruptions have affected Russian social media network Signal messaging users.
jFirst reported by the independent news source iStories, the outage began early on Friday, August 9.
Regarded as one of the safest messaging applications, Signal Messenger lets users share files, have audio and video conversations, and send encrypted texts.
Following the deployment of Russian forces into Ukraine in February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin intensified his crackdown on opposition and free media.
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Access to Twitter, which subsequently changed its name to X, as well as Meta’s Facebook and Instagram have been blocked, along with a number of independent Russian-language media outlets that have been critical of the Kremlin.
The director of the Internet Protection Society and the man behind the ZaTelecom Telegram channel, Mikhail Klimarev, claims that Russia started blocking Signal on August 8.
“This indicates precisely a blocking of the messenger in Russia and not a technical problem on the Signal side,” Mikhail Klimarev, author of the Telegram channel “For Telecom”, told Reuters.
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