Using a New Cyber Tool, Westerners Have Been Texting Russians About the War in Ukraine

[douglas9]

People around the world are using a new website to circumvent the Kremlin’s propaganda machine by sending individual messages about the war in Ukraine to random people in Russia.

The website was developed by a group of Polish programmers who obtained some 20 million cellphone numbers and close to 140 million email addresses owned by Russian individuals and companies. The site randomly generates numbers and addresses from those databases and allows anyone anywhere in the world to message them, with the option of using a pre-drafted message in Russian that calls on people to bypass President Vladimir Putin’s censorship of the media.

Since it was launched on March 6, thousands of people across the globe, including many in the U.S., have used the site to send millions of messages in Russian, footage from the war, or images of Western media coverage documenting Russia’s assault on civilians, according to Squad303, as the group that wrote the tool calls itself.

The initiative is one among a number of efforts, mainly by Western media organizations and governments, that are trying to puncture the tight controls Mr. Putin’s government has imposed within Russia on reporting about the conflict, which Russian media are banned from describing as a war.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/using-a-new-cyber-tool-westerners-have-been-texting-russians-about-the-war-in-ukraine-11647100803?mod=djemalertNEWS

[Chainfire]

1. In today's world, you can only treat your subjects like mushrooms for so long

before the sunlight begins to trickle in.

[SheltieLover]

2. +1

[dalton99a]

3. Kick

Dey Correa, a 33-year-old mother from Panama, said she sent 100 emails to random Russians after seeing the bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine.

“This situation is horrible, I feel so sad, and I wish to do something.… I have a seven-month-old baby, and I couldn’t stop crying when I saw so many babies having to flee bombs,” Ms. Correa, who trained as a civil engineer, said.

Ms. Correa says she received 20 replies. Most were belligerent — one sender, who mistook her for a U.S. citizen, said he would throw a nuclear bomb on America — but others were more engaging. One owner of a beauty salon answered that she was Russian, but not a supporter of Mr. Putin.

Receiving such messages could present risks for some residents of Russia. Russian police were filmed checking people’s mobile phones and reading their communication following a string of antiwar protests in recent days.

A Russian mother of three from the southeastern city of Saratov who had been sent information about the war in Ukraine by a Dutch man using the Squad303 tool said that it caused her pain to see what was going on. She had received images of terrible destruction and civilian casualties, the woman, age 36, said.