Contacting rights groups more safely

For anyone who wants to contact a lawyer, a rights group or a journalist and worries about the messages being seen.

The 5-minute minimum

• Take contacts only from the organisation's official website or its card on Kompas, not from forwarded messages: popular bots have clones that collect data.
• Before your first message, check the organisation's designation on its card. If it is designated 'undesirable', 'extremist' or 'terrorist', messages with it may raise questions if your phone is inspected. Decide for yourself; if in doubt, discuss the risk with a lawyer.
• Be brief: what happened, where, when, how to reach you. Send documents only when asked.
• Real rights defenders don't ask for passwords, SMS codes or money for a consultation in a chat.
• Giving an interview or comment under your own name to an 'undesirable' outlet is treated as 'participation' in its activities (Article 20.33). Mediazona counted 81 such fines on journalists and readers in 2024, mostly on people who helped produce material; Meduza accounted for the most (45).

If you are at risk

• In Russia Telegram has been almost fully blocked since April 2026. Agree on a backup channel outside Telegram (email on a foreign service, Delta Chat) and on a code word in case someone else writes instead of you.
• Turn on auto-delete in chats with lawyers and rights defenders if your phone may be inspected. If a case has been opened, a report drawn up or your phone seized, don't delete anything without a lawyer: deletion can be used against you and won't remove what the authorities have already copied.
• Discuss your case in person or over secure channels, not over an ordinary phone line and not in MAX.
• Don't write to rights groups from a travel phone and don't keep their contacts on it.
• Asking for help for yourself and spreading an organisation's material are not the same thing. Read their guides, but don't repost them.

What not to do

• Don't contact rights groups via MAX, VK, Odnoklassniki or Russian email.
• Don't send photos of your passport and documents until you are asked for them and told how they will be stored.
• Don't send money to 'lawyers' who found you themselves, and don't trust contacts sent to you by strangers.
• Don't forward someone else's messages with rights defenders to third parties without that person's consent.

What traces remain

• Your operator keeps records of whom you called and sent SMS to, and when.
• Regular Telegram chats and bot history are stored on the server and are visible if your unlocked phone is inspected.
• A money transfer to a designated organisation leaves a trace at the bank.

current as of 7 October 2026. More: Access Now Digital Security Helpline (24/7, Russian spoken); Front Line Defenders: 24/7 emergency contact for defenders at risk (Russian spoken); First Line: choosing a secure messenger; First Line: is it risky to deal with 'foreign agents' (updated 07.11.2025); First Line: understanding the designations of organisations and media; Security in-a-Box: secure messaging (Russian); Meduza: 81 fines in 2024 for cooperating with 'undesirable' media (10.01.2025, in Russian) (foreign agent, undesirable); OVD-Info: how the 'undesirable organisations' law works (updated 25.08.2026, in Russian) (foreign agent, extremist, on Rosfinmonitoring list)