If anyone thought the censorship machine had hit rock bottom, think again. The state and telecom companies have joined forces to rip people off in broad daylight. They realized they cannot simply ban all encrypted traffic without breaking the entire internet, so mobile operators in Russia decided to play dirty. They started identifying encrypted connections that they cannot read, and instead of leaving them alone, they labeled them as "file transfers" or P2P networks. And what happens when a connection gets that label? A totally unjustified fee of 87 rubles per day is slapped onto the phone bill.
This is not a bug or a random network error. It is a massive, coordinated scam. The regime is essentially turning internet access into a luxury tax. When ordinary people just want to read the news, watch a video without state propaganda, or access a blocked app, they are forced to use secure tunnels. The telecoms use deep packet inspection, see this encrypted data, realize they cannot snoop on it, and immediately penalize the user. They actually pretend that regular browsing through a secure server is the same thing as heavy torrenting, giving people a pathetic 5-gigabyte daily limit for their money. If people complain to customer support, they get a robotic answer claiming that the network is simply billing for P2P protocols. They completely ignore the fact that secure tunnels are essential for basic safety today.
To make it look like people have a choice, the companies offer a sneaky way out. They tell subscribers that they can open their mobile application, navigate to the settings, and activate a specific block on file-sharing networks to stop the daily charges. Sounds fair, right? But the moment people slide that switch, their secure tunnels stop connecting completely. The internet just dies for those specific apps. By turning off the fee, people are literally turning off their own ability to bypass censorship. It is a brilliant, evil trap. People either pay the daily ransom, or they stay locked in the digital cage with state-approved websites only.
This is a new way to fight VPNs that relies purely on financial exhaustion. Most individuals cannot afford to throw away nearly 2,600 rubles a month just to read the truth. It is extortion. The companies know exactly what they are doing. They are profiting from totalitarian laws while playing dumb, claiming they just charge for network load. It is a pathetic excuse. They are selling out the last drops of freedom for pocket change, helping the dictatorship isolate everyone from the outside world.
