Things seem to have taken quite a turn in Russia as the government has just passed a new law mandating internet service providers to log all internet traffic in the country. According to the law, internet providers are required to abide by the law for a year.

Understandably, this unexpected move has prompted VPN providers like Private Internet Access (PIA) to discontinue their gateways in Russia and move out of the region. When asked about the impact of this new law on VPN services in the region, a spokesperson for PIA had this to say:

“We think it’s because we are the most outspoken and only verified no-log VPN provider.”

PIA is of the opinion that the enforcement regime that surrounds the new law actually prompted Russian authorities to confiscate some of its Russian servers recently with no prior notice. However, it added that because PIA does not log session and traffic data, the confidential data of its users is still secure and has not been compromised.

As a precautionary measure, PIA is following standard operating procedures to improve security measures by rotating all existing certificates and updating client applications. Manual configurations have also been update to support some of the strongest encryption algorithms like RSA-4096, SHA-256 and AES-256.

In order to continue using the service, you will have to update your desktop client and the Android app from Google Play. Users with Manual OpenVPN configuration will have to download the new config files from the client download page.

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