State Duma passes bill banning website registration using foreign email

MOSCOW. July 26 (Interfax) - The State Duma passed a bill on Wednesday at its third and final reading that prohibits registration on Russian websites using foreign email services.

The bill obligates owners of websites or webpages, information systems, or computer programs who are Russian legal entities or Russian citizens and who operate on the Internet on Russian territory to register users using a range of methods that rule out the possibility of using foreign email services.

The new regulation only applies to sites that have user registration and authentication functions, such as marketplaces, State Duma Information Policy Committee head Alexander Khinshtein said.

According to the document, such registration will be possible by phone number, via the state services portal, using the Unified Biometric System, using an email address registered with Russian services, and also using identifiers on Russian sites. "The list does not include accounts registered via foreign services, for example, Google or Apple ID," Khinshtein said.

According to the document, providing information on websites on ways of bypassing the block on information sites in Russia will become grounds for the inclusion of such sites or domains in Russian telecoms watchdog Roskomandzor's Unified Register of Prohibited Information.

Anton Gorelkin, deputy head of the State Duma Information Policy Committee, who authored the amendment, earlier said on his Telegram channel that the new regulation prohibits advertising ways to bypass the block, but does not prohibit the use of VPN services.

People who were already registered on Russian websites with foreign email services at the moment the law is adopted will not need to undergo authentication again, the State Duma said.

The regulation on the rules governing registration on Russian websites was adopted as part of the bill governing the work of news aggregators in Russia, which the State Duma also adopted on Wednesday. It is due to take effect on December 1, 2023.