Russian telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor has received and complied to a court order to blacklist Telegram in the country. It did so by blocking millions of addresses, impacting plenty of unrelated services, including Nintendo Network. All three platforms using it (Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch) are now unable to access online play, and are getting error messages when attempting to. Impact varies by internet provider, since they all have blocked different addresses. According to players, Splatoon 2 is the most affected game as a result of this ban.

Nintendo has acknowledged the problem on Russian social media site VK, but has no information to share as of now. Hopefully, Russian players will be able to play online again soon.

Source

 

[TotalInsanity4]

Fake. I just tried it on 3ds, works as it should. Maybe some local provider's problem, but not global block.

The 3DS and Wii U use different servers than the Switch. Have you tried on that?

 

[NZ_reg]

The 3DS and Wii U use different servers than the Switch. Have you tried on that?

Don't have one, can't try, sorry.

 

[FAST6191]

whats wrong with telegram?
is it just a bullshit strike against a free message service? or one that allows privacy?

https://telegram.org/faq#q-where-is-telegram-based

Q: Where is Telegram based?

The Telegram development team is based in Dubai.

Most of the developers behind Telegram originally come from St. Petersburg, the city famous for its unprecedented number of highly skilled engineers. The Telegram team had to leave Russia due to local IT regulations and has tried a number of locations as its base, including Berlin, London and Singapore. We’re currently happy with Dubai, although are ready to relocate again if local regulations change.

https://telegram.org/faq#security

Q: How secure is Telegram?

Telegram is more secure than mass market messengers like WhatsApp and Line. We are based on the MTProto protocol (see description and advanced FAQ), built upon time-tested algorithms to make security compatible with high-speed delivery and reliability on weak connections. We are continuously working with the community to improve the security of our protocol and clients.
Q: What if I’m more paranoid than your regular user?

We've got you covered. Telegram’s special secret chats use end-to-end encryption, leave no trace on our servers, support self-destructing messages and don’t allow forwarding. On top of this, secret chats are not part of the Telegram cloud and can only be accessed on their devices of origin.
Q: So how do you encrypt data?

We support two layers of secure encryption. Server-client encryption is used in Cloud Chats (private and group chats), Secret Chats use an additional layer of client-client encryption. All data, regardless of type, is encrypted in the same way — be it text, media or files.

Our encryption is based on 256-bit symmetric AES encryption, 2048-bit RSA encryption, and Diffie–Hellman secure key exchange. You can find more info in the Advanced FAQ.

https://telegram.org/faq#q-do-you-process-data-requests

Q: Do you process data requests?

Secret chats use end-to-end encryption, thanks to which we don't have any data to disclose.

To protect the data that is not covered by end-to-end encryption, Telegram uses a distributed infrastructure. Cloud chat data is stored in multiple data centers around the globe that are controlled by different legal entities spread across different jurisdictions. The relevant decryption keys are split into parts and are never kept in the same place as the data they protect. As a result, several court orders from different jurisdictions are required to force us to give up any data.

Thanks to this structure, we can ensure that no single government or block of like-minded countries can intrude on people's privacy and freedom of expression. Telegram can be forced to give up data only if an issue is grave and universal enough to pass the scrutiny of several different legal systems around the world.

To this day, we have disclosed 0 bytes of user data to third parties, including governments.

 

[BlackWizzard17]

Maybe Russia is trying to help others from updating to an Un-exploitable firmware.

 

[JellyPerson]

Heavy russian accent

Putin (otherwise known as Stalin reincarnate): Hello comrades, we shall ban all free speech in order to keep our country safe.

The masses: YES COMRADE

Stalin reincarnate: Whoever disagrees will be sent to gulag.

Russian National Anthem plays.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Millions eh? They could be potentially blocking around the equivalent of x.*.*.*. (~16.7 million addresses)
That's about 0.4% of the entire IPv4 address spectrum. Maybe not a significant percentage, but there's no way that isn't going to affect a lot of different services including anything peer-to-peer like games and file sharing.
If we assume that "millions" means just a few million, say a conservative 4 million, that's still 0.1% of the entire IPv4 address spectrum. It's going to affect far more than just Nintendo Network.
That's assuming all of those addresses are IPv4 addresses. If most of them are IPv6 that's different.

I seriously doubt Telegram have anywhere near that many IP addresses to begin with. The people who made this list of IPs must have been almost picking them at random.
It would have been much easier to block the DNS lookups with wildcard matches to catch all *.telegram.org subdomains for example. Not as effective, since it could be easily bypassed with an alternate DNS, but at least there wouldn't be false positives.

 

[JellyPerson]

Come on, comrade, we shall pick different IP addresses from this empty bottle of vodka!

***hearty laughter***

 

[oji]

In Russia Telegram along some other messengers was heavily used by drug dealers & also so called 'opposition' and even a few terrorism related groups. As result a goverment made some laws which force all companies to provide a way to read all messages sent by / from Russian users to a national security department. It's nothing wrong to protect country's interests, in one or another matter it happens everywhere in the world, and not always even known by masses, just think about NSA.

 

[TotalInsanity4]

In Russia Telegram along some other messengers was heavily used by drug dealers & also so called 'opposition' and even a few terrorism related groups. As result a goverment made some laws which force all companies to provide a way to read all messages sent by / from Russian users to a national security department. It's nothing wrong to protect country's interests, in one or another matter it happens everywhere in the world, and not always even known by masses, just think about NSA.

By "the opposition" I assume you mean an organized group to oppose Vladimir Putin?

 

[oji]

Not Putin himself, most of them oppose to an overall country, here even a meme "that country" they used to death to point it's not their country at all. They share a same nature as all other 'oppositions' guided by a colored revolution methodology used all over the continent, financed by well known sources.

 

[XDel]

Hmmm, so banning Nintendo rather than the more crass network/cultures of the Sony and Microsoft "adult" crowd, is going to preserve Russia from certain corruption?

 

[DarthDub]

In Russia Telegram along some other messengers was heavily used by drug dealers & also so called 'opposition' and even a few terrorism related groups. As result a goverment made some laws which force all companies to provide a way to read all messages sent by / from Russian users to a national security department. It's nothing wrong to protect country's interests, in one or another matter it happens everywhere in the world, and not always even known by masses, just think about NSA.

Sounds a lot like 1984.

 

[Reploid]

Hahaha, it's where I live

 

[sarkwalvein]

Sounds a lot like 1984.

You shall practice your doublethink! Crimethink is unacceptable!

 

[oji]

Sounds a lot like 1984.

Only for those who live in a pony world. In China, for example, Telegram is blocked from 2015 or so. Most countries spy for their citizens, especially USA, just think about it, nearly every digital action of an average American user is watched and written for a future usage, by national security & commercial services like Facebook. And no one (except maybe for China) else have such a power for monitoring like US do.

 

[sarkwalvein]

Only for those who live in a pony world. In China, for example, Telegram is blocked from 2015 or so. Most countries spy for their citizens, especially USA, just think about it, nearly every digital action of an average American user is watched and written for a future usage, by national security & commercial services like Facebook. And no one (except maybe for China) else have such a power for monitoring like US do.

That doesn't make it good, justifiable or anything we should stop criticising. For sure it's not a case of "nothing wrong to protect country's interests".

 

[yodamerlin]

I heard that the regulator a few years ago sent out requests to block 127.0.0.1

 

[sarkwalvein]

I heard that the regulator a few years ago sent out requests to block 127.0.0.1

Well, the regulator knows their reach is only local........

 

[Deleted User]

well comrades, this is a step closer to a safer motherland and a better online gaming experience.

by accidentally banning Nintendo, we have made their games less attractive, our gaming comrades now have a more open mind and can enjoy other platforms.

our original internation was to bann a messaging tool that many drug dealers and terrorists use, less illegal drugs and terrorism creates a safer motherland, it may be impossible to create a truly safe motherland. but we will certainly try.

now come comrades! let us become weebs! we shall create a more united motherland! when our glorious leader retires and is too old to help us, we shall elect our wonderful comrade Plutia to take his place!

 

[Viri]

Maybe Russia is trying to help others from updating to an Un-exploitable firmware.

I guess Putin really is hyped for Atmosphere cfw. He really doesn't want to accidentally update, even if it means locking out the entire country from Nintendo's network.