From September 29, students at the Perm campus of the Higher School of Economics can access their electronic gradebook, apply for a transfer to state-funded study, or check their documents only by logging in through Max, according to a letter the university administration sent to students. The information was also posted on the HSE Perm website.

Course chats and a class-schedule bot were moved to the messenger. Students who objected created a petition demanding an end to mandatory authorization through the state messenger. It gathered more than 3,000 signatures in 11 hours, 7x7 reported.

This is not the first case of students being forced to move to Max. In December 2025, students at the Novosibirsk Aviation Technical College reported such pressure, saying they were forced to install the state messenger under threats of lower exam grades. In March 2026, a similar complaint came from Syktyvkar State University, where instructors threatened those who refused with summons to a "security service" and possible problems obtaining their diplomas.

Meanwhile, a clause has appeared in Max's privacy policy allowing it to track which channels and content users view and how they react to it, Verstka noted. The changes were made last Friday: subsection No. 9 was added to clause 2.1 on data processing — "Other information about the user's use of the service, including information on interaction with channels and content (including subscribing to and unsubscribing from channels)."

According to the service, the purpose of the changes is to ensure "personalization" of content on the platform and to "improve the user's experience of interacting with such content." The previous version of the policy, dated May 18, allowed the processing of full name, phone number, nickname, data on technical devices, IP address and browser type.

Leonid Yuldashev, coordinator of eQualitie's Russian-language projects, told The Moscow Times that this data could reach security services. According to him, the difference between Telegram and Max is that Max complies with the requirements for organizers of information dissemination in Russia, that is, it hands over data to the FSB, while Telegram does not. Dmitry Kuteinikov, a lawyer at RKS.Global and a researcher in AI governance, noted that in Max Russians have no right to refuse personalization, whereas in the EU such a rule exists; there, a similar clause on tracking channels and content "could not be legal at all."

It was previously reported that VK, the corporation that developed Max, can remotely enable functions to track network activity, decrypt voice messages and check the contents of correspondence. Specialists at the digital security laboratory InterSecLab and RKS Global also found that Max lacks end-to-end encryption, and that the "secret chats" option does not protect correspondence but merely sets a timer for automatic deletion of messages.