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Connection check: Fraud victims will not be able to quickly take out loans and transfer money
The victims of telephone scams were offered to be included in a special database, Izvestia learned. People on this list will not be able to immediately carry out banking operations, such as taking out loans or making transfers. First, they will have to confirm whether this is a bona fide request. Such amendments to the second reading of the draft law of the Ministry of Digital Affairs on combating telephone fraud were proposed by the head of the State Duma Committee on Financial Markets Anatoly Aksakov. On March 18, this government document has already passed the first approval in the State Duma.
When and why will gullible citizens get into a special database
The deputies reviewed and approved in the first reading the draft law on combating telephone fraud. Representatives of the Ministry of Finance came to the lower house of parliament — this is the main author of the document. The officials presented a report on the key provisions of the future law, the deputies evaluated them, and also made their suggestions for the second reading. Izvestia reviewed the transcript of the State Duma meeting.
According to the deputy head of the ministry, Ivan Lebedev, who spoke in the lower house as the keynote speaker, a third of all crimes in the country are committed in information computer technology. Since 2022, officials have recorded an annual increase of 30%, we are already talking about more than 700 thousand crimes, 70% of them are "fraud" or "theft". More than 1 million citizens in the Russian Federation have been affected by such actions. The damage caused is estimated, according to various estimates, at 200-250 billion rubles, said Ivan Lebedev.
Anatoly Aksakov, head of the State Duma Committee on Financial Markets and a member of the United Russia faction, spoke during the discussion of the draft. He stressed that scammers usually cheat and steal money using social engineering — psychological manipulation of people.
— People themselves help transfer money to intruders, this happens ten times more often than with the help of stolen information, — said the parliamentarian, speaking in the State Duma. — Therefore, even the use of biometrics does not always help: a person will transfer his money himself under the influence of fraudsters due to his nature and exposure to them.
Anatoly Aksakov proposed to form a database of people in Russia who have already been manipulated by fraudsters several times and transferred funds to them. If citizens from such a list try to take out a loan or make a transfer of funds, then the resource of the Central Bank FinCERT (computer incident response group) should give a signal to financial organizations so that they know that we are talking about a person who has already independently transferred money to criminals. And then financial institutions will respond effectively and not carry out the operation until they find out how conscientious it is, the deputy noted.
According to the idea, the database will belong to the Central Bank, so there should be no leaks, Aksakov is sure. He clarified to Izvestia that the authorities would not impose any significant restrictions on gullible people.
— We are talking about an automatic assessment of their actions — whether they are affected by fraudsters at a particular moment, existing technologies allow us to assess this. Further, the bank will make an operational decision on the operation, in practice it may take from five to 30 minutes," he said.
Ivan Lebedev from the Ministry of Finance, during the discussion of the bill, recalled that now the document contains a kind of sober measure, including for such people. He noted that fraudsters usually influence citizens while a phone conversation is going on, people disclose the data they receive in SMS. But if short messages come with a certain interval, for example, in 10 minutes, then the person will have time to cool down, get away from pumping up outside emotions and evaluate everything more rationally. This can save him from making a mistake.
The initiative to create such a database requires discussion of how rational it is, the press service of the Ministry of Finance told Izvestia. Such proposals should be developed in strict compliance with citizens' rights and legislation, including the law on personal data, they noted.
How will the degree of credulity of citizens be determined?
The Central Bank has not received such an offer, the press service of the regulator told the editorial board. They noticed that banks have tools to combat fraudulent transactions, which are provided for by current legislation and acts of the Bank of Russia.
According to the assessment of the Post Bank, in general, the implementation of such an approach is possible, although it is still difficult to assess the effectiveness, they told Izvestia.
The editorial board sent requests to other major banks, including state—owned organizations such as Sberbank and VTB.
There are a significant number of people who are potentially easily exposed to fraudsters, and it is their attackers who often "work out" several times, Alexey Koitov, chairman of the Consumer Union of the Russian Federation, told Izvestia. The reason lies in the peculiarities of the psyche of such citizens: they are gullible and easily susceptible to suggestion, so they are always in danger, they are easily deceived in the store, on the market, and so on.
— But is it possible to make such a diagnosis without a trial or any official procedures? It's very doubtful. Here, as with the recognition of a person as legally incompetent or with limited legal capacity, there should be an initiative from close relatives or other persons who have the right to initiate such an official process," the expert explained. — Signs of such mental characteristics manifest themselves in everyday life, they can be typified and, identifying a critical set of their manifestations, assume that this is the same potential victim.
But then, without going through any individualized procedure, just giving them fewer opportunities than other people is wrong. This is some kind of discrimination, he noted. The mechanism itself needs to be worked out, and the final decision should be made by the authorized body either on the basis of an appeal from the person himself or his close relative, Alexey Koitov is sure.
Increasing the level of protection of vulnerable categories of citizens looks like a completely correct and timely measure, Oleg Pavlov, head of the Public Consumer Initiative, told Izvestia. Therefore, the introduction of "additional targeted security measures such as suspending transfers or issuing loans during the cooling-off period, as well as a list of trusted persons for authorizing banking operations," is fully justified, he noted.
"Since we are not talking about the refusal of financial services, but about additional rules for their provision, this does not contradict the legislation," the expert explained. — In the EU countries, the method of asset freezing is already being used to counter crimes in the financial sector. Customer accounts are frozen if a transaction is made for an amount exceeding a certain limit, or if the transaction is suspicious, for example, atypical for the customer. At this point, the attackers cannot use the funds.
There will be a question of what criteria will be used to include people in this database, Mirza Chiragov, head of digital law at Ligalpix, told Izvestia. If these are people who previously fell under the actions of scammers, it means that the mechanism will not work, because the person has already been deceived and will be deceived again. If we are talking about some criteria, then these are already discriminatory or formal signs. In addition, there is a real threat of violation of the rights to privacy, the expert noted.
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