VPN provider PIA withdraws from Russia after servers seized

The VPN provider Private Internet Access, also known as PIA, says that its Russian servers have been seized after an action by the local government. The company is therefore making the decision to permanently remove its servers from Russia.

No traffic or session data came into the hands of the Russian government during the seizure, the company said. PIA claims that it does not keep any logs of user activity. The government’s move is said to be the result of a new law requiring all providers to store users’ internet activity for a year. According to the VPN provider, the seizure took place without notice or legal proceedings.

The decision to no longer offer services in Russia is accompanied by a security measure, whereby all certificates are refreshed. In addition, PIA announces an update of its client applications and therefore asks its users to perform an update. This update introduces better encryption via manual settings, including 256bit-aes and 4096bit-rsa. Users with an openvpn configuration will be prompted to download new configuration files.

PIA states that only Russia is currently being shunned, but that it is conducting an assessment of other countries from which it may withdraw. The provider is an American company that specializes in offering VPN services, which allow users to connect to a VPN server via a secure connection and use the Internet from there.