The government will prohibit employees of government agencies, banks and telecom operators from using foreign messengers for official communications or communication with citizens. Similar restrictions will affect owners of social networks, aggregators of goods and services, and services for posting ads. In this way, the authorities are going to fulfill the demand of President Vladimir Putin to step up the fight against telephone scammers, writes RBC.
The measures are explained by the fact that foreign messengers are increasingly being used by criminals in criminal schemes and it is almost impossible to control this. The list of prohibited services will be compiled by Roskomnadzor. When using permitted domestic messengers, officials will have to confirm their identity through the Unified Identification and Authentication System (ESIA). A similar requirement will be extended to marketplaces, aggregators of goods and services and classifieds sites with an audience of more than 200 thousand people: sellers on such sites will be required to undergo verification using an account on Gosuslugi.
The government’s plan also provides for a number of other measures. For example, biometric identification will be required for statements from credit bureaus and remote processing of microloans. Subscribers of mobile operators want to be given the right to refuse advertising calls and mailings, and calls from international numbers and from organizations are planned to be marked: the corresponding name will be displayed on the phone screen. In turn, government agencies engaged in operational-search activities and responsible for security will be able to request information of interest to them from telecom operators. To implement all these measures, it is planned to change dozens of federal laws, including in the field of communications. The explanatory note cites data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, according to which in 2023 the number of crimes related to the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) increased by 30%, to 677 thousand, and in the first nine months of 2024 – by 16.4%, to 564 thousand. In 20% of cases, we are talking about thefts from a bank account. The most common methods of fraud are calls allegedly from a bank employee or law enforcement agency, online advertisements for the purchase and sale of goods, online registration of microloans, hacking of social networks and instant messengers with subsequent sending of requests for a loan, phishing sites. Most often, the investigation of such cases is delayed and terminated due to the inability to identify the accused: in 2023, this happened with 71% of cases. The authors of the document expect that the possibility of online exchange of information between government agencies, banks and digital platforms will allow “almost instantly identifying suspicious actions, blocking them and notifying law enforcement agencies of potential crimes.” A representative of the Ministry of Digital Development assured that the amendments “will not have a negative impact on citizens.” The government commission on legislative activity will consider them in the near future, and all these measures are planned to be implemented in 2025-2026.