About 85,000 websites were included in the Russian Internet blacklist over the past year, 98 percent of them blocked without a valid reason, a new study said.

      Since November 2012, Russian state agencies have received the power to block without a court order websites they deem to be promoting suicide or illegal drugs, or disseminating child porn.

      The blacklisting is often done by a website’s numerical IP address, which is routinely shared by dozens of sites, all of which end up on the blacklist if one of them is banned.

      About 741 IP addresses were blocked by the government over the past year, according to a study by Rublacklist.net independent online watchdog.

      Another 1,392 were blacklisted by their unique domain names, said the study, released Tuesday. Such bans are more precise, but are technically harder to implement.

      The governmental Roskomnadzor agency did not comment on reports about innocent sites being blocked. Such sites are generally located outside Russia and do not target Russian audiences.