EN

About Freedom Checker — who measures this, and why

Freedom Checker shows which VPNs, Telegram proxies and online services work in Russia right now — from our own measurements, taken on physical hardware located inside the country.

Who does this

The project is run by Ateo Digital, an independent newsroom working on digital restrictions in Russia. We have no ties to state bodies, carriers or VPN services, and we work to nobody's order.

Ateo Digital runs several tools, and they all do the same thing — give the reader a checkable fact instead of a rumour:

  • Freedom Checker — availability of VPNs, proxies, virtual cards and eSIMs;
  • Wanted Radar — search across open public wanted registries;
  • Dozor 404 — availability of web services as a user inside Russia sees them;
  • The blog — explainers on blocking, protocols and circumvention.

What pays for the project

The project makes no profit. Hardware, SIM cards, traffic and subscriptions to the services under test are paid for out of our own pocket.

Some services offer affiliate links once they appear in the checker. We do place them; the amounts are token and go straight back into hardware. A place in the table is not for sale: a service gets there only after we have bought a subscription with our own money and tested it covertly for several months. The details are on the how we measure page.

Why there are no bylines

The subject of this project is circumventing censorship in Russia. A public byline here creates risk for specific people rather than adding credibility. Instead of a name we offer what can be checked: an open methodology, machine-readable data under a free licence, and the ability to reproduce any measurement yourself.

The data

Measurements are published openly under CC BY 4.0. You may use and republish them, including commercially, as long as you credit the source with a link. Journalists and researchers — get in touch and we will help with an export for the period you need.

Contact

← To the availability table · How we measure