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>We have made the decision to block signups for all IP addresses we identify as coming from within Russia. We have also removed our app from the Apple and Googl

>We have made the decision to block signups for all IP addresses we identify as coming from within Russia. We have also removed our app from the Apple and Google app stores for customers in Russia. WTF? Why would you ever do that? You said you have no legal presence in Russia, why f*ck over the users? Instead of ignoring hostile stupidity you're helping it, this is mind boggling. Sorry, I can't "feel good" about your services anymore.

sidlls 5y ago
To me it's more disappointing that they actually considered meeting the demands of the regulatory body. I'd have simply blocked Russia after the loss in court. Also, why should Fastmail expose itself any further, in any way as a target of Russia's corrupt dictatorship? It does suck for those Russians impacted. They should turn their ire toward the real problem though: their government.
- ZoomZoomZoom 5y ago
  > why should Fastmail expose itself any further Expose to what exactly? Sanctions, neural-gas attacks or nuclear weapons? Does Russia have any legal or technical levers which could potentially harm Fastmail business?
  - UseStrict 5y ago
    I mean, I legitimately wouldn't be surprised if they took political prisoners if Fastmail showed up to court to fight, or hammer out an agreement. Let alone what they would end up having to submit to while operating within the country. Russia is known to be pretty hostile towards the west.
- mjthompson 5y ago
  I thought this too. On the other hand, it does make sense to them to publicly claim that the reason they moved out was for technical rather than political reasons. It might not make themselves a highly attractive target for a retaliatory DDoS attack.
- tzs 5y ago
  What if they could meet the regulations without it costing too much and without exposing them to risk of compromising privacy and security? I don't see why you find it disappointing that they checked to see if that was the case rather than immediately pulling out.
UseStrict 5y ago
I don't think it's up to Fastmail to fix the nonsense coming out of the Kremlin. The Russian government wants them to basically compromise their service to comply with their spying needs, Fastmail simply opted out. I think they chose a reasonable option.
- ZoomZoomZoom 5y ago
  They didn't comply, which is perfectly reasonable. But they should have stopped at that. I don't know what "fixing" you're talking about.
  - longcommonname 5y ago
    We recently did a similar thing at the company I work for in response to similar pressures. The effort to make that change was significantly less than the continual effort required to deal with the pressures. From a cost perspective their decision makes sense, from a customer perspective less so.
    - ZoomZoomZoom 5y ago
      Again, what pressures?
      - clucas 5y ago
        I think you are underestimating the trouble a nation-state can make for a foreign company, especially if that foreign company continues to leave itself exposed by doing business in that nation-state. I don't know the exact ins and outs of how courts will enforce foreign judgements (I'm sure it's very case-by-case), but saying "we cut off signups from people in that country" is surely a very strong prophylactic against such a judgement being enforced. And on a more petty level, Russia could make serious trouble for any Russian expats employed by Fastmail (or their relatives still living in Russia). Cutting off signups makes this at least marginally less likely.
varispeed 5y ago
Soon similar will be happening because of the EU's TERREG - only difference is that even if you block EU IP addresses, the law is still going to apply if you have a "significant" EU user base. This means companies who want to opt out will have to request proof of citizenship of all their users to establish how "significant" is their user base and then either terminate the accounts or set up a legal presence in the EU with a censorship officer.
- patrakov 5y ago
  This is not a difference. The Russian law also talks about Russian users, not IP addresses.
duxup 5y ago
I can understand Fastmail wanting to be in compliance with the law... or just not do business there. Making a whole effort of operating in Russia, being blocked, and trying to work around that seems like a potentially endless effort. Meanwhile you're offering a service to your customers that would be pretty spotty considering all the hassle going on.
- patrakov 5y ago
  It is not about compliance (existing accounts are kept, and decision to prevent signups is made purely on the basis of the IP address and not e.g. the country that issued the credit card). It is about avoiding the promised blocking of outgoing mail from Western users of FastMail to Russian users of any other mail provider.
  - duxup 5y ago
    Well compliance and "avoiding the promised blocking" are same at this point.
    - JAlexoid 5y ago
      It's a business decision and I doubt that they made it lightly.
- patrakov 5y ago
  You may also want to watch my FOSDEM 2020 talk, "Software distribution: new points of failure (In a censored world)". It is about cases when governments block legitimate services due to nothing bad done by the said services, only because of their bad neighbors. https://archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/sdnpof/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/sdnpof/
igammarays 5y ago
To prevent new users from potentially losing access to the service later on. Why would you sell a mission critical service to a customer you know you cannot support?
- JAlexoid 5y ago
  I'm in US. I have a few people that I send emails to, who's MX servers are in Russia. I would be extremely annoyed, if I suddenly couldn't contact those people... because Russian "sovereign internet" system blocks my MX. I would also be annoyed, if my email provider provided access to my data for Russian special services. All considered - I'd rather that they cut off Russian signups, than either of the other two options.
clucas 5y ago
According to their blog post, "If we didn't comply, they stated they had the right to block our website (and possibly all data transmission) between us and anyone within Russian borders." They were were going to be blocked anyway. So the two options were "Russian users are blocked, and the Russian government considers us law-breakers," or "Russian users are blocked, and the Russian government does not consider us law-breakers." Even if there are no direct consequences that the Russian government can enforce on Fastmail, I can't imagine why they would want to choose option 1. Why do you think they should? What good would it do for anyone?
- gpm 5y ago
  They might also be aiming to preserve their ability to send mail to russian mail servers, and to serve existing russian users, and to let new russian users sign up by signing up with a IP address outside of russia. I.e. a choice between "russia is ineffectively blocked by us" vs "russia is effectively blocked by the russian government".
  - teknopaul 5y ago
    yeah remember the block is because they don't have enough Russian customers to make complying with local data laws worth the cost/effort. They were not banned the were asked to obey the law and they weighed up pros and cons. Normal. Plenty of US sites refuse to let eu citizens view thier content because they don't want to comply with GDPR (which I consider a reasonable set of laws that protect me) Personally I use Yandex for email so the NSA can't get their hands on it and I don't have to continually fight changes in terms and conditions that want to sync my advertising id with Google or Facebook. Fastmail obeying local laws is the correct thing to do. There is no malice in the law as it is written, its just data protection _from_ the US government.
    - baybal2 5y ago
      > There is no malice in the law as it is written Please read what you have wrote now. Law say go spy after A and B, ESPIONAGE
    - 5y ago
JAlexoid 5y ago
They still want their customers to be able to send emails to Russian servers. Having their servers straight up blocked would be annoying at best, disastrous for some users at worst. Because email isn't like internet, the MXes connect directly and don't typically have intermediary relays. If Russia decided to straight up block all fastmail MXes - Russian customers wouldn't be able to transmit anything between Russian hosted MXes and Fastmail. So their actions protect their functionality, more than their potential customers.

sidlls 5y ago

To me it's more disappointing that they actually considered meeting the demands of the regulatory body. I'd have simply blocked Russia after the loss in court. Also, why should Fastmail expose itself any further, in any way as a target of Russia's corrupt dictatorship? It does suck for those Russians impacted. They should turn their ire toward the real problem though: their government.

ZoomZoomZoom 5y ago
> why should Fastmail expose itself any further Expose to what exactly? Sanctions, neural-gas attacks or nuclear weapons? Does Russia have any legal or technical levers which could potentially harm Fastmail business?
- UseStrict 5y ago
  I mean, I legitimately wouldn't be surprised if they took political prisoners if Fastmail showed up to court to fight, or hammer out an agreement. Let alone what they would end up having to submit to while operating within the country. Russia is known to be pretty hostile towards the west.
mjthompson 5y ago
I thought this too. On the other hand, it does make sense to them to publicly claim that the reason they moved out was for technical rather than political reasons. It might not make themselves a highly attractive target for a retaliatory DDoS attack.
tzs 5y ago
What if they could meet the regulations without it costing too much and without exposing them to risk of compromising privacy and security? I don't see why you find it disappointing that they checked to see if that was the case rather than immediately pulling out.

UseStrict 5y ago

I don't think it's up to Fastmail to fix the nonsense coming out of the Kremlin. The Russian government wants them to basically compromise their service to comply with their spying needs, Fastmail simply opted out. I think they chose a reasonable option.

ZoomZoomZoom 5y ago
They didn't comply, which is perfectly reasonable. But they should have stopped at that. I don't know what "fixing" you're talking about.
- longcommonname 5y ago
  We recently did a similar thing at the company I work for in response to similar pressures. The effort to make that change was significantly less than the continual effort required to deal with the pressures. From a cost perspective their decision makes sense, from a customer perspective less so.
  - ZoomZoomZoom 5y ago
    Again, what pressures?
    - clucas 5y ago
      I think you are underestimating the trouble a nation-state can make for a foreign company, especially if that foreign company continues to leave itself exposed by doing business in that nation-state. I don't know the exact ins and outs of how courts will enforce foreign judgements (I'm sure it's very case-by-case), but saying "we cut off signups from people in that country" is surely a very strong prophylactic against such a judgement being enforced. And on a more petty level, Russia could make serious trouble for any Russian expats employed by Fastmail (or their relatives still living in Russia). Cutting off signups makes this at least marginally less likely.

varispeed 5y ago

Soon similar will be happening because of the EU's TERREG - only difference is that even if you block EU IP addresses, the law is still going to apply if you have a "significant" EU user base. This means companies who want to opt out will have to request proof of citizenship of all their users to establish how "significant" is their user base and then either terminate the accounts or set up a legal presence in the EU with a censorship officer.

patrakov 5y ago
This is not a difference. The Russian law also talks about Russian users, not IP addresses.

duxup 5y ago

I can understand Fastmail wanting to be in compliance with the law... or just not do business there. Making a whole effort of operating in Russia, being blocked, and trying to work around that seems like a potentially endless effort. Meanwhile you're offering a service to your customers that would be pretty spotty considering all the hassle going on.

patrakov 5y ago
It is not about compliance (existing accounts are kept, and decision to prevent signups is made purely on the basis of the IP address and not e.g. the country that issued the credit card). It is about avoiding the promised blocking of outgoing mail from Western users of FastMail to Russian users of any other mail provider.
- duxup 5y ago
  Well compliance and "avoiding the promised blocking" are same at this point.
  - JAlexoid 5y ago
    It's a business decision and I doubt that they made it lightly.
patrakov 5y ago
You may also want to watch my FOSDEM 2020 talk, "Software distribution: new points of failure (In a censored world)". It is about cases when governments block legitimate services due to nothing bad done by the said services, only because of their bad neighbors. https://archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/sdnpof/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/sdnpof/

igammarays 5y ago

To prevent new users from potentially losing access to the service later on. Why would you sell a mission critical service to a customer you know you cannot support?

JAlexoid 5y ago
I'm in US. I have a few people that I send emails to, who's MX servers are in Russia. I would be extremely annoyed, if I suddenly couldn't contact those people... because Russian "sovereign internet" system blocks my MX. I would also be annoyed, if my email provider provided access to my data for Russian special services. All considered - I'd rather that they cut off Russian signups, than either of the other two options.

clucas 5y ago

According to their blog post, "If we didn't comply, they stated they had the right to block our website (and possibly all data transmission) between us and anyone within Russian borders." They were were going to be blocked anyway. So the two options were "Russian users are blocked, and the Russian government considers us law-breakers," or "Russian users are blocked, and the Russian government does not consider us law-breakers." Even if there are no direct consequences that the Russian government can enforce on Fastmail, I can't imagine why they would want to choose option 1. Why do you think they should? What good would it do for anyone?

gpm 5y ago
They might also be aiming to preserve their ability to send mail to russian mail servers, and to serve existing russian users, and to let new russian users sign up by signing up with a IP address outside of russia. I.e. a choice between "russia is ineffectively blocked by us" vs "russia is effectively blocked by the russian government".
- teknopaul 5y ago
  yeah remember the block is because they don't have enough Russian customers to make complying with local data laws worth the cost/effort. They were not banned the were asked to obey the law and they weighed up pros and cons. Normal. Plenty of US sites refuse to let eu citizens view thier content because they don't want to comply with GDPR (which I consider a reasonable set of laws that protect me) Personally I use Yandex for email so the NSA can't get their hands on it and I don't have to continually fight changes in terms and conditions that want to sync my advertising id with Google or Facebook. Fastmail obeying local laws is the correct thing to do. There is no malice in the law as it is written, its just data protection _from_ the US government.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    > There is no malice in the law as it is written Please read what you have wrote now. Law say go spy after A and B, ESPIONAGE
  - 5y ago

JAlexoid 5y ago

They still want their customers to be able to send emails to Russian servers. Having their servers straight up blocked would be annoying at best, disastrous for some users at worst. Because email isn't like internet, the MXes connect directly and don't typically have intermediary relays. If Russia decided to straight up block all fastmail MXes - Russian customers wouldn't be able to transmit anything between Russian hosted MXes and Fastmail. So their actions protect their functionality, more than their potential customers.