Ban on registering foreign mail in the Russian Federation: the problem and ways to eliminate it

Many people probably already know that since December last year it has been officially prohibited in Russia to register on certain online resources using foreign postal services. Some only in theory, while others have probably managed to make sure that this law works in their own practice. But is everything so serious? What threat does such a decision pose for business representatives and ordinary Internet users? What methods of registration are currently allowed in Russia? But what about the situation if we are not talking about a regular user address, but about a corporate email that has its own registered domain? What should ordinary people, as well as business representatives, do in this situation? Let's try to find answers to these questions now.

What does foreign mail mean?

Before moving on to getting acquainted with the features of the restriction itself, as well as how to circumvent it, it is necessary to understand what kind of mail will be considered foreign and fall under the prohibitions of this law. The first thing that comes to mind is the Gmail service, which is very popular among many users. This means that every email whose address ends with @gmail.com is banned. And this is quite a serious blow to both ordinary users and business representatives, because this email service is extremely popular all over the world. It offers users convenient and stable email, as well as the ability to connect to a huge number of services and tools developed by Google with just one click.

This means that owners of gmail.com mail can automatically connect to YouTube, Docs, SpreadSheets, Drive, as well as many other products popular among users. The main advantages of this mail also include thoughtful and convenient sorting of letters into three tabs, the ability to customize the interface for yourself, and the ability to receive and send letters up to 500 times a day. The latter aspect makes this email extremely popular among business representatives.

By the way, the following services were also banned:

1. Outlook. Microsoft Corporation's own email service, offering users to store 15 GB of email correspondence on their own servers and another 5 GB of cloud storage for saving any files. Users highlight its user-friendly interface with plenty of space to work with, which can be easily customized. Here you can start video meetings directly from your email and use the built-in text editor when composing letters. It is also possible to automatically translate a received message into Russian from different languages of the world. In addition, the anti-spam system here is one of the most serious today.
2. ICloud. One of the most significant advantages of this email service is that all parameters here can be saved directly in the cloud environment. Here you can synchronize signatures, create dynamic boxes on each of your devices, and save VIP contacts separately. In this case, all changes that you make on one device will automatically be applied to others. This means that in any case, all versions of your mail will be up to date.
3. Yahoo. The mail service of the same name from Yahoo, which can be used completely free of charge. The storage here is built-in and is designed exclusively for letters, but its volume is huge — 1 TB. Here users can set up an additional address for replying to incoming emails, and separate areas for more convenient and detailed viewing. There are also additional built-in functions, in particular notes, calendars.
4. AOL. An email service that offers users unlimited storage space for correspondence. Provides instant messaging, maintains an active address for 6 months of inactivity, has simple and fast communication with other web service providers, Virus spam protection. Thanks to the built-in spell check, your delivery will look as competent and professional as possible. It also provides support for a huge number of domain names, which will be useful for both ordinary users and business representatives.

Why did we briefly summarize the features of all these email services? To make it clear what powerful tools modern business and ordinary users are losing after the introduction at the legislative level of restrictions on the ban on foreign mail platforms. And not every business and ordinary people who are accustomed to using them are ready to abandon them at the first request. By the way, all restrictions that will apply to email services will also be relevant for personal Google and Apple accounts.

What methods of registration remain relevant for Russian users?

If the use of foreign services is prohibited, then all that remains for Russian users is to connect to one or another site through Russian postal services. This means that in your work you can use services such as:

1. Yandex. That is, it will be possible to register mail whose name ends with @yandex.ru or @ya.ru.
2. Rambler. This mail service currently allocates to its users the addresses @rambler.ru, @myrambler.ru, @ro.ru.
3. VKontakte. These are addresses that end in @vk.com, @inbox.ru, @mail.ru, @internet.ru @bk.ru, @list.ru.

It will also remain possible to use single accounts, which today are provided to users by the Yandex search engine and the social network VKontakte. With their help, it will be possible to register on sites and log in later in the same way as it currently works in systems Google and Apple.

But registration via email — This is not the only possible option for gaining access to a particular service. Also, Russian users will be able to legally and legally connect to certain sites in the following ways:

• using a phone number from one of the Russian operators;
• through the ESIA system, that is, the Unified Portal of Public Services;
• using EBS — Unified biometric system

Which method do you choose — It's an individual matter. But still, practice shows that the most popular way of registering on certain sites today is still email. If you directly monitor the services from which Russian users send emails, then 30% of all electronic correspondence passes through foreign services. As we said above, the leader in this segment — service @gmail.com, which is used in practice by slightly more than 25% of Russian users.

Russia's domestic postal services account for approximately 60%. The leader here is the @mail.ru service with an indicator of 38% and @yandex.ru with an indicator of about 15%. The remaining 10% — These are users of corporate mail of certain services, that is, those who use paid solutions in their work.

That is, based on these figures, we can say with confidence that a third of all e-commerce that is conducted today on the Russian market came under restrictions after the law was put into effect. As for corporate email, everything is very ambiguous here, which we will talk about next.

So what will happen to corporate email?

We would like to immediately draw your attention to the fact that in this case we are not talking about a free mailer, but about a mail service that is hosted on its own domain owned by a particular company. But it will still be based on one of the services we talked about above. Until recently, business representatives relied on @gmail.com. That is, most corporate mail will be within the scope of the law. It is impossible to say for sure today whether corporate users fall under this ban or not, as well as to predict how the situation will develop in the future.

Many experts are still confused because they cannot delve into all the details of this law. And the main difficulty here is precisely in identifying these very foreign services. For example, you see in front of you an email that is in the .com zone. The first thought that comes to your mind is: this mail is foreign. And now you see mail in the .ru zone. What thought will you have at this moment in time? Most likely, this is a Russian service. And so it would be logical if not for one big BUT: a huge number of mail services that are today in the .ru zone are hosted not in Russia, but in China. By and large, we have a foreign service, right?

That is, despite the fact that this law came into force several months ago, today there are a huge number of technical questions and inaccuracies that arise not only among ordinary users, but also among specialists. But the fact that more than 30% of Russian users have definitely fallen under the restrictions (we will consider 10% of corporate users as questionable for now) cannot be denied.

Why do we need a law banning the use of foreign email services when registering on Russian websites?

The decision to develop this law was made in order to ensure a higher level of protection of personal user data and to avoid their uncontrolled circulation. Today, not a single service can guarantee that users’ personal information stored on foreign resources is not subject to comprehensive control (in fact, the same as on Russian services). Nobody says how and where it can be used in the future.

And all this is relevant not only for the personal data that users enter when registering on a particular service, but also for a fairly impressive amount of related, so-called “sensitive information”. Therefore, Russian legislators decided that in order to avoid risks, all this information should be stored directly in the Russian field.

What should users of foreign postal services do in this situation?

Well, they passed the law well, that means they accepted it. But what should users do in this situation who already have mail on the same @gmail.com and it was previously used to register on various sites? It turns out that you need to register a new box for yourself on one of the Russian services and again go through the path of the samurai, namely re-registration on all resources? If this is an ordinary user who literally works there with a couple of services on the Internet, then such a solution will not pose a problem. But what should people do who work with hundreds of different services every day and have their own accounts there?

The big advantage of this law is that it does not have retroactive effect. This means that it applies exclusively to all those registrations that will be carried out after its entry into force, in this case from December 1, 2023. It turns out that if you registered on certain Russian sites before December 1 of last year, then you won’t have to change anything. You can easily access these resources even through foreign mail accounts. This will apply to absolutely all social networks, as well as any other platforms, including even government services.

But if you still need to undergo a new registration on one or another resource, you will have to create a separate account for this on the Russian postal service and subsequently use this exact address. And then you don’t have to worry about any restrictions or prohibitions. The third-party authorization methods that we discussed above, in particular through telephone, EBS, ESIA, will still remain available, but not on each of the services.

To meet the growing needs of Russian users for certain email addresses, the mail.ru service has created a new mail branch, called xmail.ru. Absolutely anyone can go here from the same @gmail.com or any other foreign service.

What should business representatives do?

Let us immediately make a reservation that despite the fact that the law has already come into force, there are no penalties from the system for services that continue to register users with foreign emails today. This means that most of the sites simply turn a blind eye to email addresses and continue to register new users. Everything here is clear and logical, because every person who registers on one or another site — This is a potential client, a buyer who is ready to purchase goods, services, pay money and bring profit to this company.

But no one can say how long this trend will continue. We cannot ignore the fact that fines will still be introduced. This means that a more reliable and proven solution in this case would still be to follow the letter of the law, including for business representatives.

What needs to be done for this? Here are 2 main steps:

1. Refuse to use foreign services, in particular, remove integration with Google ID and Apple ID, if it was previously provided for you.
2. Introduce an additional option into the registration form, prompting users to enter a Russian address instead of foreign mail, in particular the same @gmail.com. How this will be implemented is up to you. Alternatively, you can prompt users to provide a Russian address during the registration stage before moving on to the next step. It would be useful to make an additional explanation with reference to this law. In this case, you will significantly increase the chances of maintaining customer loyalty. The person will see that you are following the law and not expressing your own quirk.

After a detailed analysis of this ban, many experts came to the conclusion that the methods of registration on sites and services that exist today in Russia are clearly not enough to ensure maximum convenience and functionality for the user audience. Therefore, it makes sense for business representatives whose resources require pre-registration of people to think about what completely legal methods of registration could be used in practice in order to minimize the number of refusals and maintain the level of trust on the part of users.

We would like to draw your attention to one more nuance of this law: it prohibits registration using foreign postal services only for users who are currently geographically located in the Russian Federation. That is, if you are a citizen of the Russian Federation, but at one time or another you are abroad, then this law does not apply to you. You will still be able to register on Russian sites using foreign mail.

But you also need to understand that if you have citizenship of another country, but are geographically located in Russia, then the requirements of this law will apply to you. That is, you should register on sites except through Russian postal services.

We can conclude that all business representatives who currently have their own representative offices in the online space, requiring all users to go through the registration stage, now need to maintain a balance between maintaining the loyalty of their clients and the norms prescribed by law. Most likely, in the foreseeable future you will need to check the IP-address from which this or that person will try to register on your resource.

Are there ways to bypass such restrictions? Eat. And one of the most effective solutions — using mobile proxies.

How can mobile proxies help you bypass legal restrictions?

To understand how using mobile proxies you can bypass the ban on registration on Russian services through foreign mail services, you need to understand exactly what kind of solution we are talking about. So, mobile proxies — This is a kind of intermediary server that will replace your real IP address and geolocation with its own technical parameters. Moreover, you will have the opportunity to independently choose the most suitable location for yourself, not only in one or another region of Russia, but also in many other countries of the world. The number of available GEOs directly depends on which provider you contact for mobile proxies.

This means that by working through such an intermediary server, you will create the appearance of a completely different user on the network. In particular, the effect will be created that you are geographically located in some other country. This means that all legal restrictions will be irrelevant for you and you will be able to register on any website, including through mailboxes belonging to foreign services.

Today, this is one of the simplest and most effective solutions that will allow you to work on the Internet without restrictions, despite all sorts of prohibitions and potential dangers. Also, using mobile proxies in practice, you can provide yourself with the widest and most functional experience on the Internet, provide yourself with a high level of confidentiality and protection from any unauthorized access or hacker attacks. You will also have access to all foreign sites and services without exception, including those that are currently closed to residents of Russia. You can also use services that automate online actions. You will also be able to work without any restrictions with a large number of accounts on the same social networks, bookmakers, marketplaces, message boards, etc.

The only thing that needs to be taken into account in this case is the fact that you should have exclusively reliable and time-tested mobile proxies at your disposal.

Which mobile proxies to choose?

We would like to draw your attention in advance to the fact that free proxies that can be found on the Internet today in a fairly wide range — this is not a solution you should be interested in. The fact is that they are characterized by low functionality and efficiency. They will not provide you with the functionality you want. You will simply waste time searching and setting them up, but you will not get the desired stability.

That is why we recommend that you initially pay attention to mobile proxies from the MobileProxy.Space service. This is a private solution focused exclusively on you. No outsider will work with them at the same time as you. Thanks to parallel connections to ports, simultaneous operation on the HTTP(S) and Socks5 protocols is ensured, and at the same time high stability, functionality and security of work.

In addition, you will have at your disposal over 2 million unique IP-addresses, hundreds of geolocations from different countries and regions of the world. This means that such a question as the law banning registration with foreign mail will no longer be relevant for you. Follow the link https://mobileproxy.space/en/user.html?buyproxy to learn more about the functionality of mobile proxies , study the most popular questions that interest users, as well as find out the answers to them, useful articles on this topic.

We would also like to draw your attention to the current tariffs, in particular to the fact that they may differ for different countries and regions. There is also a direct relationship between the period for which you buy them. If we analyze the prices, we can conclude: when purchasing an annual tariff, a day of use will cost you about 10 times less than if you purchased a daily tariff. If difficulties arise in the work process, additional consultations will be required; the technical support service will be in touch at a time convenient for you.

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