Wrong people have been contacted: who sells anonymous SIM cards to criminals
Anonymous SIM cards have long been used for their own purposes by organized crime, but recently the state has been successfully knocking the ground out from under the feet of criminals. Experts told Izvestia how the criminal world manages to issue such SIM cards and what to do about it.
The weak link
Increased liability for so-called drops and technological innovations have led to a shortage of anonymous SIM cards on the black market. Their value on darknet platforms has increased significantly. The most relevant source of "numbers" remains the unscrupulous employees of communication salons who have the authority to issue and issue SIM cards. However, the police took them too.
In early September, a court in Tatarstan fined 30,000 rubles to an employee of a mobile phone store who illegally sold 141 SIM cards. The man, in violation of the rules, implemented them through a messenger — when buying, the client sent only a photo of the passport, the authenticity of the document was not verified. The citizen was brought only to administrative responsibility under Article 13.29 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation (failure by the telecom operator to comply with the established procedure for verifying the authenticity of information about the subscriber), since the intent to commit a more serious act was not proven. The court found him guilty and imposed a fine of 30,000 rubles.
Meanwhile, in early summer in St. Petersburg, a commercial organization threw 32.5 thousand SIM cards on the black market. The rooms were decorated with "phantoms".
"It has been previously established that the criminal scheme was organized by a resident of the Vsevolozhsky district of the Leningrad region, the head of a multi–brand dealer of mobile operators. He found an ad on the darknet about the mass purchase of active Russian phone numbers by call centers operating in Ukraine," said Irina Volk, an official representative of the Russian Interior Ministry. The agency believes that the entrepreneurs provided the phone scammers with SIM cards, from which over 15,000 fraudulent calls were made.
Not for the mafia, but for a bonus.
Intent to commit acts in the interests of criminals in such cases is usually difficult to prove. Employees who are caught in violations often explain the design of cards for "left" passports by the desire to receive a bonus (staff are usually stimulated to attract new customers).
So, in Khakassia, a sales consultant for a regional telecommunications company was detained, who was exposed in seven episodes of illegal registration of SIM cards.
"According to the preliminary investigation body, the woman, using her official position, illegally accessed legally protected computer information contained in the company's unified billing platform, and entered into it the personal and passport data of her acquaintances, issuing SIM cards to them without the consent of citizens," the regional administration said in a statement. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia.
Operator's capabilities
— Employees of operators and communication salons can be identified and issue "pre-registered" SIM cards and activate them through internal channels, — says Alexey Gavrishev, lawyer, managing partner of AVG Legal.
They also have access to personal data and billing, and hypothetically they can leak this information for self-interest, the Izvestia source explains.
In the future, their crimes may be classified under articles on violation of the secrecy of communications (Article 138 of the Criminal Code), unauthorized access to information systems (Article 272 of the Criminal Code), as well as under the article on the manufacture and use of a deliberately forged document.
How is the operator's control set up?
Every company has an internal security protocol that employees and management must follow. As Gavrishev explained, this is KYC (a customer identification and verification procedure used by financial institutions and telecom operators — Know Your Customer) according to a single scenario (passport/ESIA verification, photo fixation, "self-locking" verification).
There is also a differentiation of rights in CRM (customer relationship management system) and HLR (central database in the mobile network, which contains all information about the subscriber), logging of all activations. Anti-fraud rules must also be observed, for example, batch connections, "carousels" on the same passport, identical IMEI/IMSI, spikes in "bank" numbers).
— Effective tools — dealer control and "secret buyers". These mechanisms catch mass manipulations in the "days-weeks" horizon, point—based ones — after requests from the security forces or banks," the lawyer emphasizes.
What threatens honest citizens
The use of a SIM card issued by fraudsters without the subscriber's knowledge will result in a number of difficulties for the one whose documents were submitted.
— These are the procedural costs (surveys in fraud cases), the financial risks of post—payment, - explains lawyer Gavrishev.
To minimize the consequences of such deception, he recommends that you request the operator in writing to cancel the number and issue a certificate of issue without the subscriber's will; file a fraud report (Criminal Code art. 159.6/159); send a request to the credit history bureau (218-FZ) and enable self-locking for SIM cards.
How the black market will change
According to lawyer Gavrishev, the vector of interest of criminals is shifting towards foreign SIM cards that can work in roaming in Russia.
— It is also likely that SIP/VoIP technology with number substitution (this is a session establishment protocol that replaces communication over a telephone line with an Internet connection), corporate M2M pools (information-based interactions without human intervention) will be actively used.
According to the interlocutor, the criminal market will continue to use drops for registration of means of communication, they will continue to steal biometric data for remote identification.
— The price of a "clean" SIM card is growing, and so is the footprint: the tougher KYC and logging are, the shorter the life of an anonymous number.
In his opinion, the most "bottleneck" in the information security system is the human factor at points of sale, as well as remote identification.
— The combination of self-locks, strict KYC, end-to-end logging and liability under the Criminal Code turns an anonymous SIM card into an expensive and short-lived tool. For a conscientious subscriber, the main thing is to turn on the self—lock and promptly challenge any number issued in his name without his knowledge.
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