Russia considering banning Skype, HotMail Gmail

The cold war continues! Russia is now actually considering banning Skype, HotMail and Gmail. Russia’s Federal Security Bureau (FSB) said that these type of services use foreign made encryption technology and concluded that their popular usage poses a security risk to the country!

As reported in the Agence France Presse, the FSB is increasingly concerned that uncontrolled usage of these services may lead to a massive threat to Russia’s security. The FSB also was quoted as saying the services are often used by extremist organizations because control of the traffic is through servers outside Russia.

The article goes on to say that until now, Russia has been able to avoid the total internet crackdown that is in effect in China. But now, there is no telling how long and to what degree internet freedom will survive in the country.

Guess we will be seeing a number of webmaster email account changes on our programs soon!