Here’s what we know about Blink, Russia’s Gen Z location-sharing app that publicly attacks VK’s Max messenger but sends user data to the tech giant
Russian messaging app Blink, which lets users track their friends’ locations, sends user data to VK servers, Novaya Gazeta Europe journalists found. Publicly, however, Blink takes aim at VK, attacking one of the company’s leading products, the Max messaging app, and feuding with VK design director Artemy Lebedev. Here’s what you need to know.
- In August 2026, Blink and bloggers apparently linked to the company lashed out at Lebedev after he called Blink an “anti-app” in which “everything is terrible, everything is monstrous.”
- Blink employees also criticize the Max messaging app:
- In a video from VK Fest, a Blink social media manager approaches supposedly random people and asks which name is the worst. They always answer, “Maksim.” “Never talk to Max. He’s not your friend; we are,” he says at the end of the video, standing in front of a booth for the MAX messaging app.
- Eight senior Blink employees and one of the company’s former CEOs either moved to Blink from VK or still work at VK.
- Blink continuously tracks users’ movements and sends the data to multiple destinations, including VK servers, without end-to-end encryption.
- The app sends users’ location data to MyTracker, an analytics system owned by VK:
- Blink does this every few seconds, making it possible to reconstruct a detailed route: the path someone took, how fast they were moving, and where they stopped.
- The app’s main component, Blink Maps, is hosted on VK’s own servers, which VK does not rent out.
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Blink
The messenger launched in 2023. Its founders are Maxim Klimchuk, who came from Aviasales; Dmitry Trachuk, co-owner of the MDK community; and Maria Mysh, a former employee of the Zenly app. According to Blink, by July 2024, its monthly audience had exceeded 5.9 million people (72% of whom were between 11 and 24 years old), and by August 2025, it reached 10 million.