Official: New rules for messengers’ users to protect from fraudsters

MOSCOW, Nov 6 (PRIME) -- The rules of identification of messengers’ users by phone numbers, earlier approved by the government, will protect Russians from perpetrators exploiting anonymity of messengers, Leonid Levin, head of the information policy committee at the State Duma, the parliament’s lower house, said on Tuesday.

The omnipresence of mobile connection brought to life several types of frauds committed via anonymous SIM cards, Levin said, reminding that the law obliging mobile operators to check credibility of information about subscribers came in force on July 1.

“In view of the fact that messengers are mainly applications for mobile devices, the new rules of identification, which are a subordinate act to the law on connection in the part of provision of services of mobile connection, correlate to the existing ban on the sale of SIM cards without a passport and outside the designated areas,” the official said.

“As to sale of SIM cards of foreign operators, their unauthorized sale is also forbidden, but we should stipulate an option of passing procedures of identification for foreigners who’re in roaming on the territory of the Russian Federation.”

Under the rules, a messenger must ask a connection operator about the presence of a number while identifying a user. If the phone number is absent from the operator’s base or there is no response, identification fails and the messenger refuses to provide services to the person. The rules will become valid in 180 days.

Sergei Plugotarenko, director of the Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC), said that identification of messengers’ users by phone numbers could be useless because of the “gray” market of SIM cards.

The text of the current government ruling has not been published on the state portal and experts did not have a chance to discuss it or comment on it. The adopted rules raise many questions, Plugotarenko said.

It is unclear what information messengers and connection operators will exchange and how this information will be regulated in the part of data protection, he said.

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