- Parler’s new static web page uses an Internet Protocol address owned by DDoS-Guard.
- The Russian technology company is linked to racist, far-right and conspiracy theories.
- Critics of Parler said it was a potential security risk to become dependent on a Russian company.
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Parler, a social media site and program popular with American right-wingers, returned online in part on Sunday – with the help of a Russian technology company.
Parler was hosted on January 11 by the Amazon Web Services (AWS) website. AWS said the platform “poses a very real risk to public safety.” The site has since registered its domain with Epik and returned on Sunday as a static page with a brief note from CEO John Matze.
The Internet protocol address it used is the property of DDoS-Guard, which is controlled by two Russian men and provides services, including protection against cyber attacks, known as distributed attacks on denial of services, infrastructure expert Ronald Guilmette told Reuters.
DDoS-Guard worked with racist, far-right and conspiracy sites.
Matze and representatives of DDoS-Guard did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Read more: Parler allegedly spent $ 300,000 a month on Amazon’s cloud before it was banned, which is a sign that it will not be that easy for the far-right social app to get online again.
On Wednesday, January 13, Matze told Reuters the company was in talks with several service providers but did not want to expand.
Matze has since said he is confident Parler will be fully operational by the end of January and that the platform will succeed in retrieving its data from Amazon.
Evgeniy Marchenko, one of DDoS-Guard’s two founders and owners, told The Guardian that the company is a global information security service and that it has hosted ‘thousands of sites’. These include Russian government websites and the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer.
It has also previously partnered with controversial Internet provider VanwaTech in Washington, which hosts the website of 8kun, a social media site popular with QAnon supporters and used by rioters to plan the siege of the Capitol.
“We are not involved in any political issues and in no way want to be associated with customers offering such toxic sites as QAnon / 8chan,” Marchenko told The Guardian.
Critics of Parler said it was a potential security risk to be dependent on a Russian company, as well as a strange choice for a site popular among self-described patriots.
Russian propaganda has fueled political divisions in the US, supported outgoing US President Donald Trump and reinforced false stories about election fraud and protests against police brutality.
Describing himself as a ‘nonpartisan’ free speech haven, Parler has become a hub for President Donald Trump’s supporters after many of their Twitter accounts along the social media site, along with Trump’s own, were purified is.
In the days following the siege of the Capitol on January 6, it became a haven for far-right activities and misinformation due to the lax attitude about moderating the content. Trump himself has considered joining the website called ‘Person X’, Matze said earlier.
After the siege, Google and Apple quickly shut down the app in their app stores, and AWS took Parler offline. Parler has since hit the tech giant with an antitrust lawsuit, disputing Amazon’s allegations that it has repeatedly warned Parler about violent content.