The lawyer named the Russians' documents of interest to the fraudsters

The main document of interest to fraudsters is the passport of a Russian citizen. In addition, the attackers are trying to find out the details of bank cards, the INN number and documents confirming ownership of the property. Ekaterina Zabolotskaya, lawyer and managing partner of ROCK Counselor, told Izvestia on March 4 how to secure her data and what to do if they fall into the hands of scammers.

With the help of stolen passport data, scammers issue loans to the victim. According to the expert, it takes a long time to find out about the debt, so it is necessary to observe security measures.

"In our practice, there was a case when a loan was issued to a citizen using a lost passport, money was received from a credit institution, which the citizen himself found out about only when he tried to fly on vacation, but was stopped at the border due to a travel ban imposed by bailiffs. As it turned out, the unpaid debt was recovered from him in court, the accounts were arrested, and due to non—payment of the debt, he was banned from leaving the country," Zabolotskaya said, adding that it took almost a year to challenge the court's decision.

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The lawyer warned: if the passport is lost, then it is necessary to report this to the Ministry of Internal Affairs as soon as possible — when issuing loans, banks are required to check whether the passport is valid through a special service. In addition, the expert recommended regularly checking your credit history through electronic services.

In addition to the passport, fraudsters may be interested in INN and SNILS data. The expert warns that the loss of these documents should be immediately reported to the tax authority and the Social Fund. The staff will cancel the document number and assign a new one.

Zabolotskaya also clarified that the data of all documents is stored on the Gosuslugi portal, therefore, to log in to the service, you need to come up with a complex password, periodically change it and set up two-factor authentication.

"This will make it more difficult to hack into your personal account, unless, of course, you provide this data to scammers yourself," the expert added.

The lawyer also warned that bank card data should not be stored in cloud storage, because they can fall into the hands of intruders.

In addition, scammers may be interested in documents confirming ownership of the property. By owning this data, attackers can make fraudulent transactions or use the property in criminal schemes.

"Protect yourself by submitting an application to the Federal Register stating that you can dispose of your property only in your personal presence," Zabolotskaya said.

At the same time, the expert warned that starting in November 2024, criminal liability will be imposed for the illegal use, transfer, collection and storage of computer information containing personal data.

Earlier, on March 2, it was reported that the scammers came up with email fraud scheme. The attackers began using the unsubscribe button from the mailing list, clicking on which leads to a phishing site, said Sergey Kuzmenko, head of the Roskachestvo Digital Expertise Center.