Entries for the two companies appeared in the registry of information-spreading organizers (known by its Russian acronym ORI) on October 2, the Tech Talk Telegram channel noted. Neither Apple nor Microsoft has commented on the listing, and it is not known whether they joined voluntarily or were added by force.
Since 2024, Roskomnadzor, Russia's communications regulator, has had the authority to add companies to the registry without their consent. It did so in 2025 with the service Cloudflare, which had ignored a requirement to join the registry on its own.
Services on the list are required to store user data on Russian territory — including correspondence, voice and video messages — and to hand it to the Federal Security Service (FSB) on first demand. Refusal carries fines or blocking. In Apple's case the rules cover iMessage, FaceTime and iCloud, among other services. FaceTime began being blocked in Russia in 2025.
Apple has already been fined on this basis: in the summer of 2025 a Moscow court ordered the company to pay 500,000 rubles under a charge of repeatedly failing to meet ORI obligations. The grounds for the fine were not specified.
In December 2024, Roskomnadzor added the WhatsApp messenger to the ORI registry, and in the summer of 2025 it began blocking it. Journalist Andrei Zakharov noted at the time that the service's presence in the registry "does not mean that it hands over your correspondence," but that it is "a way to apply pressure — and, if need be, to block." According to Tech Talk, inclusion in the registry gives regulators the formal right to block the services.