Wildberries and Ozon are recognized as critically important: the Ministry of Finance named services that will work without the Internet
The Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation has compiled a list of digital services that will be accessible to citizens even in the event of large-scale outages of the mobile Internet. This so-called "white list" includes the most popular and socially significant platforms, without which it is difficult to imagine everyday life today, including the largest marketplaces, online banks and government portals.
According to the information, the approved list includes several key categories of Internet resources. The first group includes public sector services: the Gosuslugi portal, electronic voting platforms, and official platforms for government feedback. An important place in the list was taken by the means of communication — the social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, the company's services Mail.ru , the Zen platform, as well as the domestic messenger Max.
A landmark decision was the inclusion of Wildberries and Ozon in the list of the largest Russian marketplaces, as well as the popular Avito ad platform and the Magnit retail chain website. This highlights their new status role as a critical infrastructure to meet the daily needs of the population. The financial sector is represented by online services of backbone banks: Sberbank, Alfa-Bank, T-Bank, Gazprombank, as well as the National Payment Card System (NSPK).
Access will also be provided to the personal accounts of all major telecom operators (MTS, MegaFon, Tele2, Beeline), Rutube and Kinopoisk video platforms, 2GIS navigation service and key Yandex products.
The criteria for being included in the list, as explained in the ministry, was the high popularity and social significance of the resources. We are talking about services that millions of people use every day to solve a wide variety of tasks: from communication and shopping to financial management and government services.
From a technical point of view, the implementation of the mechanism looks like this: when certain conditions occur, telecom operators will restrict traffic, blocking access to all Internet resources except those whose network addresses are included in a special permissive list. This is a relatively simple filtering scheme at the network level. However, its practical implementation is fraught with complexities, since modern web services actively use many third-party connections to analytics servers, advertising networks and monitoring systems, which must also be taken into account for the full operation of the main sites.
According to sources, this list is not final and will be significantly expanded in the future. It is planned to add up to 80 companies belonging to the Association of Internet Commerce Companies (AKIT), among which may be "M.Video, Citylink, Lamoda, and Sbermarket. Negotiations are also underway to include the services of the X5 Retail Group retailer (which owns the Pyaterochka and Perekrestok chains) and online platforms of the tourism industry.
Currently, domestic telecom operators are already conducting test tests of the pilot operation mode according to the "white list". It is important to note that for ordinary users, the process of accessing authorized resources will not involve any additional steps, such as entering a captcha or going through identification. The Ministry of Finance assures that the chosen technical solution is the most effective for guaranteed maintenance of key digital services for the population in a hypothetical situation of limited access to the global network.
