What does it mean to ban mobile messenger? Anonymous use of instant messengers will be banned in Russia. It is forbidden to be transparent

Russians were prohibited from using instant messengers anonymously. The government has approved new rules, according to which now instant messaging services can only be used by those who link them to a real number and confirm their identity through the operator. During the identification process, the messenger will send a request to the operator to find out if the subscriber is in the database. The operator will have 20 minutes to provide a response. Each user will be assigned a unique code.

For operators, compliance with the new legislation will require additional costs, emphasizes Sergei Vilyanov, leading analyst of the Fintech Lab accelerator: “Operators will have to process millions of requests, and given that today every citizen has more than one SIM card, companies will have to constantly respond to these requests and create a load on your equipment. It turns out that everyone will have to write their full name, surname and patronymic when registering in the messenger. This is, firstly, strange; this is not accepted in instant messengers. Secondly, what happens?

We take the user base - first names, last names, patronymics, probably also date of birth will be required - and hand over this information to foreign companies.

After all, most of the messengers that are popular in Russia today are foreign developments. There is no practical benefit in this."

According to Roskomnadzor, which proposed the bill, anonymous correspondence in instant messengers prevents law enforcement agencies from investigating crimes, and the new rules will supposedly be able to fix this. But Internet Ombudsman Dmitry Marinichev does not believe this. According to him, this will not only not help the work of the police, but will also complicate corporate communication: “This is simply illegal, some kind of huge security hole. Roughly speaking, you have created some kind of platform and simply by searching through and contacting telecom operators you can get the entire sample from databases with phone numbers, first and last names of registered subscribers. This is a surreal situation. In addition, the issue remains open from the point of view of corporate communications. Who will identify the employee who uses corporate communications? Then they won’t be able to install instant messengers at all; we will prohibit businesses from communicating. I do not see, firstly, the meaning, and secondly, the technical and legal enforceability of this law.

Apart from damaging the reputation of the authorities, he will not be able to bring anything.”

If the user changes their phone number, identification will need to be repeated. And those who have not passed the verification will not be able to send messages. But how the new rules will work in practice is unclear, said leading analyst of Mobile Research Group Eldar Murtazin: “Today this is a complete utopia, because it is almost impossible to achieve this. In practice, we will be faced with the fact that we will again have a situation like with the Telegram ban. There is a ban, but everyone uses the messenger. It’s just that taxpayers’ money will be wasted, formally there will be a flurry of activity, and operators will be forced to “break” the Internet, which in itself is ridiculous. But it is impossible to ensure that all this works in some digestible form. De facto, all the most popular instant messengers are located outside of Russia. Just like Telegram doesn't comply Russian legislation, so they will not follow the government’s lead and do anything.”

Since January, Russia has already had a law in force that provides for a fine for the refusal of instant messengers to identify users. For legal entities it ranges from 800 thousand rubles. up to 1 million rubles

Roskomnadzor included the messengers BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), LINE, Imo.im and the audiovisual chat Vchat into the register of prohibited sites, Roskomsvoboda reported. The register includes the portals of these messengers and a number of their IP addresses.

In Russia, access not only to the websites of these messengers will be limited, but also to their applications - they will be removed from application stores or blocked by telecom operators, Roskomnadzor representative Vadim Ampelonsky said.

Blocking mobile application together with the resource website - easy task, says a person close to one of the operators, as a rule, modern applications access specific resources, blocking which blocks applications too. The regulator has experience in excluding blocked resources from Google and Apple stores. In January AppStore and Google Play removed the application of the blocked LinkedIn from their Russian stores.

The law obliges organizers of the dissemination of information (including messengers) to provide, at the request of Roskomnadzor, their contact information necessary for inclusion in the appropriate register, explains Ampelonsky: “Those who do not respond find themselves blocked - in full accordance with the law.” To be included in the list of information organizers, the regulator asks the company to provide data about itself (not about users), says Ampelonsky, but does not disclose what kind of data this is.

From the moment the request is received, the company has five days to respond, he continues; if no response is received, the department sends a notice of failure to fulfill the duties of the organizer of information dissemination, and the company is given 15 days to correct it. Next comes the blocking. Ampelonsky did not say what other messengers Roskomnadzor used.

Amendments to the Law “On Information, information technology and on the protection of information" from January 1, 2017 oblige organizers of the dissemination of information on the Internet to store in the territory of the Russian Federation information about the facts of reception, transmission, delivery and (or) processing of voice information, written text, images, sounds, video or other electronic messages of users and information about these users for a year, and the content itself for up to six months. Services are also required to provide this content upon request. federal bodies executive power and provide them with the ability to decode information.

Roskomnadzor was the first to block the short voice messaging application Zello in April. The company also did not provide information for inclusion in the register on time.

Blocked messengers are not among the popular ones in Russia (see chart). It is possible that this indicative inclusion in the register of messengers that are not the most popular in Russia, but well-known in the world, is necessary in order to force the more popular and intractable ones among the Russian audience, primarily Telegram, to cooperate, says the head of Roskomsvoboda, Artem Kozlyuk. Telegram owner Pavel Durov has repeatedly stated that he has not collaborated and does not intend to cooperate with the intelligence services of either Russia or other countries. “But we will know about this only after this messenger is included in one of two registers: organizers of information dissemination with all the attendant responsibilities for collecting user data and providing it to the competent authorities, or in the register of prohibited sites - for blocking. For now, apparently, the regulators are deciding how to put pressure on Pavel,” says Kozlyuk.

From January 1, 2018, new rules for using instant messengers will come into effect. All users will be required to provide their number mobile phone when registering and working with any programs that have the ability to exchange messages. These are the requirements of the Federal Law “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection”. The amendments were initiated by deputies of three factions: “ United Russia", "A Just Russia" and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

According to these changes, messengers will now have to:

· Identify your users (that is, actually prohibit anonymous users from using services)

· Distribute socially important information as decided by authorities

Our main goal is to protect citizens, taking into account the current situation,” says Marina Mukabenova, State Duma deputy from United Russia. – Terrorist groups can appear in such messengers and spam attacks can be carried out.

Messengers will have to block messages advertising terrorism, drugs and child pornography. And at the request of the authorities, disseminate socially significant information, for example, reports from the Ministry of Emergency Situations about emergency weather deterioration.

What will change for users

Now you can register for services at Email. That is, virtually impersonal. But many messengers have already introduced authorization via SMS. From time to time, companies check whether the user has changed their phone number - the user is asked to enter their current number. After which he receives an SMS with a confirmation code or link. From January 1, this authorization will become the rule for everyone.

Only users identified on the basis of a subscriber number and the corresponding agreement will be able to transmit instant messages, explained Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika.

Why does the state need this? To obtain upon request the personal data of a user against whom, for example, an investigation is being conducted.

What problems are possible

1. “Messenger” is a vague concept. Technically, this definition – “information and communication service” – includes not only Telegram and others, but also chats on websites (for example, with an online consultant) and in games. It seems that Roskomnadzor will decide who is subject to the ban; according to its instructions, companies will have to bring their services into compliance with the new requirements.

2. The SIM card can be issued to "left" people.

A lot of SIM cards are sold “on the black,” Roman Romachev, general director of the business intelligence agency R-Techno, gives an example. - In any market you can buy a phone number that is registered to a legal entity. And the police are not really fighting this yet. This business must be stopped, otherwise terrorists will circumvent the ban.

In addition, scammers can also use “dead souls” - issue a SIM card for a person who will never use it (for example, a lonely old woman in the outback or a homeless person).

3. Should I change my account when moving?

Even legal users may have problems.

Linking to a telephone number is a rudiment, says Biolink CEO Evgeniy Chereshnev. - Firstly, the number is tied to the region - and this means additional problems with identification when moving. Secondly, it makes no sense for real criminals to use popular instant messengers - with the help of technology open source Anyone can create their own chat (meaning their own messenger - Ed.). Thirdly, it is not known what to do for foreigners who do not have Russian SIM cards and whose data is unknown to our operators. There is also a problem with number termination, when a number is not used for a long time and is transferred to a new owner. Having purchased a new SIM card, the owner can receive along with it the entire load of accounts registered for it. That’s why such dark situations arise when, for example, a person who has already died “lights up” online in the messenger.

4. You can make a “dummy” number.

Today there are many services that allow you to create virtual phone numbers. You can even create a number for just 10 minutes, after which it will be destroyed. But this time is enough for any attackers to send many messages.

It is possible, of course, to oblige these services to report to the state and transfer all data about each user. And if it's not Russian companies? A lot of additional difficulties arise here.

5. This is not a panacea for drug dealers and terrorists.

The messengers themselves, for example, Viber and Telegram, cannot read user correspondence and track whether there is anything about drugs and terrorism.

There are two modes of communication: regular chats that use client-server encryption, and secret chats that use end-to-end encryption and are protected from man-in-the-middle attacks, Telegram explains. – In regular chats, messages are encrypted on the sender’s side, pass through the server encrypted, and are decrypted on the recipient’s side. That is, Telegram specialists see that two people are communicating, but do not know what these messages are about. In secret chat mode, there is an additional option - visual keys that display encryption codes. Users can compare them and make sure that no one has intercepted their correspondence. In such chats, messages cannot be forwarded; they are stored only on the devices themselves, and are deleted from them after a certain time.

Who will be punished and how?

Fine for individuals - from 3 to 5 thousand rubles

Officials – from 30 to 50 thousand

For legal entities - from 800 thousand to 1 million rubles.

Messengers can be blocked - temporarily, until the violations are eliminated, or “for life”.

But it makes no sense for large services to change encryption algorithms for the sake of Russian users. According to experts, the Russian audience of the same WhatsApp is no more than 2%. So it may be easier for companies to leave the Russian market than to change code and equipment for the sake of legislative delights.

TOLD

“Telegram’s level of cooperation with the authorities does not depend on jurisdiction and is based on the same principles everywhere. Unlike their Russian colleagues, Indonesian government services did not require us to have access to personal correspondence.

All over the world, including Russia, Telegram processes requests to remove publicly available illegal content containing terrorist propaganda, child pornography, etc. However, in no country do we disclose personal data of users to government agencies.

Although a significant share of Telegram's audience comes from more conservative countries than Russia, only in Russia has Telegram been fined for failing to provide message encryption keys. This is the only such precedent in the 4 years of Telegram’s operation in the global market."

WHAT’S IT ABOUT THEM?

Mandatory identification works in other countries around the world. For example, in China, users of local microblogs are required to indicate their government identification numbers when registering. International services, such as Facebook or WhatsApp, are formally prohibited, but work there only through anonymizer applications. But since June 2017, a law came into force in China that prohibits them too.

There is a similar ban on anonymity on the Internet in Sweden. The local government introduced it back in 2011.

But the USA and Germany, on the contrary, defend the right to anonymity - at the level of judicial proceedings.

BY THE WAY

The head of Roskomnadzor said that anonymity on the Internet does not exist

The head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, said that there is no anonymity on the Internet. According to him, modern technologies allow you to determine a person by various direct and indirect identifiers: voice, face, online behavior, regularly visited resources and geolocation ()

The Russian government is introducing new rules for the use of instant messengers. Now only the person for whom it is registered will be able to use the account. phone number, tied to the service. This was stated in a message from the Cabinet of Ministers published on the official Internet portal legal information.

The new order will come into force in 180 days. The head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, in a comment to Izvestia, said that this is necessary to create a safe communication environment for citizens.

“The possibility of anonymous communication in instant messengers complicates the activities of law enforcement agencies when investigating crimes,” Zharov emphasized.

According to him, now messenger administrators will check whether the user’s phone number is actually registered to the person who is communicating. To answer mobile operator 20 minutes are given. If the user's data matches the information in the company's database, identification will be considered successful. Otherwise, the service must refuse to provide the service.

In addition, cellular companies will be required to assign users a unique identification code, which the messenger will automatically generate. The MTS press service told the publication that operators will have to make technical improvements, since the equipment currently does not meet the stated requirements. But in theory, a response to a request from a messenger within 20 minutes is feasible.

Why is it important

• On January 1, 2018, a law came into force in Russia obliging instant messengers to identify users by subscriber number. At the same time, after the law came into force, the media wrote that it was not being implemented, since there were no by-laws prescribing the rules for identifying users.
• For violating the law prohibiting anonymity in messengers for legal entities fines of up to 1 million rubles are provided.