Russia Planned to Ban Secure Auth to Force Everyone Onto State-Backed Max

Reports leaked from Forbes that the Russian Ministry of Digital Development tried to slip a wild rule into its new anti-fraud package. The brilliant idea was to force all websites, banks, and online stores to confirm "significant actions" exclusively via SMS or the domestic messenger Max.

If this sounds like a blatant attempt to force-feed a state-backed product to millions of users, that's because it absolutely is. The tech community immediately lost its mind because this genius move would effectively kill modern, free, and secure multi-factor authentication methods like push notifications or open standard TOTP codes.

Instead, businesses would be forced to pay massive bills for SMS delivery or integrate with a closed-source messenger developed by VK. Security experts point out that the Max messenger doesn't even receive push notifications reliably on Apple devices, which is surely a great feature for emergency authorization.

The corporate backlash was so swift and unanimous that only VK and mobile carriers—who would make billions off the SMS surge—supported the idea. E-commerce giant RVB, formed by the merger of Wildberries, openly warned that these extra costs would just be passed down directly to consumers, making everything more expensive.

Following the massive public outcry, officials quickly backtracked. State Duma deputy Anton Gorelkin scrambled to Telegram to claim the leak was just "artificial negative hype" and promised that users will still keep their right to choose how they log in.

In the end, trying to package monopolistic corporate greed and state surveillance as 'cybersecurity protection' is a classic move. While this specific attempt got roasted into oblivion by the entire industry, the urge to lock down the domestic internet under a single state-controlled button isn't going anywhere.