You won't be reached: why Russia is restricting Internet telephony
The limitation of licensing of the service for transferring calls from the Internet to ordinary phones does not threaten ordinary users, according to experts interviewed by Izvestia. How effective and timely such a measure is is an ambiguous question: mobile scammers have recently been chasing victims in messengers rather than phone calls, they point out. The rules for the use of office Internet telephony by legal business structures need clarification, experts believe.
Does the ban on calls from the Internet threaten ordinary users?
Termination of licenses for "landing" calls from the Internet to ordinary telephone numbers is unlikely to affect ordinary subscribers in any way. This is what experts interviewed by Izvestia say.
Asa result of the government's anti-fraud initiatives, most companies engaged in Internet telephony (IP-telephony) have ceased or minimized their activities, said Karen Ghazaryan, Director of the Internet Research Institute. However, whether such measures will help in the fight against telephone fraud is a question, as attackers do not receive any licenses, he added.
On December 28, the government published amendments to the list of licenses for communication services to limit telephone fraud. The license for Internet data transmission with voice overlay was excluded from it: it made it possible to use the Internet to reach a person using a fixed telephone or mobile communication network.
"The decision will have no impact on ordinary telephone users. People who use voice communication in messengers use special programs that provide communication via the Internet, without going to the fixed and mobile telephone network," the government said in a statement.
Vladimir Zykov, director of the Association of Professional Users of Social Networks and Messengers, believes that the initiative will not affect ordinary users who call and receive calls on the Internet using messengers. However, this measure will not solve the problem of combating telephone fraud, because a whole set of measures is needed. In particular, it is necessary to intensify the fight against the use of substitute numbers, he believes.
- The industry community is discussing the issue of introducing an analog of electronic digital signature for telephone numbers - such practice already exists, for example, in Canada. Now, when calling from an unfamiliar number, it is not obvious to the recipient of the call who his interlocutor is. "A digital signature would help solve this problem," the expert believes.
At the end of 2024, the problem with calls from intruders has worsened: they began not only to steal from Russians, but also to incite them to arson and other illegal actions.
- There is no task to ban all IP-telephony. This technology is actively used by operators for ordinary calls from phone to phone. Revocation of the license implies further prohibition of calls from Internet devices to phones bypassing communication nodes, which is used by fraudsters," said Konstantin Ankilov, General Director of TMT Consulting. - But we want clarification on whether the initiative will affect legitimate operators. Also an open question of calls between program phones.
Communication services using IP-telephony are not prohibited and will continue to be provided, explained the Ministry of Digitization in its Telegram channel. It requires a license to provide telephony services. Nothing will change for most bona fide operators, as they already have such a license, the ministry points out.
"The document prohibits the use of a certain type of license for calls over the Internet, which can "pretend" to be ordinary calls from a city or cell phone," it says. It emphasized: the changes will not affect ordinary citizens who use voice communication in messengers, as communication in such a case takes place without going to the fixed and mobile telephone network.
- "Rostelecom complies with the requirements of the current legislation. The legislative initiative does not affect the provision of the Rostelecom Virtual PBX service in any way, as it does not violate the terms of the current license. The company will take into account all the necessary requirements when obtaining a new license," the operator's press service said.
"Vimpelcom" supports initiatives aimed at combating spam and fraud, the press service of the operator noted.
- This is extremely important in the context of ensuring the safety of our customers. In "Bilayn" we already successfully use technologies that allow us to distinguish between fraudulent calls and spam calls thanks to our anti-fraud system, - said the company.
The measure proposed by the government, along with other initiatives, is designed to help fight fraud, MTS noted.
Will the government's initiative help in the fight against fraudsters?
"Izvestia" sent a request to the Central Bank and the largest banks on how they assess the effectiveness of the ban on IP-telephony to combat fraudulent call centers.
According to the most up-to-date data of the Central Bank, in the third quarter of 2024, fraudsters made 350 thousand transactions without the consent of customers, and the amount of theft amounted to 9.3 billion rubles. This is twice as much as the average for the previous year, that is, despite all the measures taken by the authorities, the volume of thefts is increasing. At the same time, the share of funds reimbursed to the victims is small - almost 12%.
In recent months, especially in the days before the New Year, a new trend began to develop actively - after a person has lost money, attackers force him to commit illegal actions (for example, under the pretext of returning stolen goods). For example, setting fire to ATMs, bank offices, post offices and administrative buildings. On December 26, the Interior Ministry said it had detained 44 suspects in such violations of the law.
The government has previously taken measures to combat fraudulent call centers. For example, before, attackers used to massively attack Russians by calling from abroad using number spoofing (they substituted the phone number of agencies or banks, which increased trust). However, thanks to amendments to the law on communications , traffic coming from abroad is controlled, so the problem of spoofed calls from abroad has been largely solved, Stanislav Kuznetsov, deputy chairman of Sber, said in an interview with Izvestia in the summer.
- But other ways of organizing attacks are emerging. 81% of all fraudulent calls are made via messengers and cloud PBXs. Attackers are also buying electronic SIM cards - eSIMs - en masse to deceive people. This has become a new trend that allows mass calls to be made to our citizens. They also use special devices - SIM-boxes, which can be used to simultaneously call hundreds and thousands of numbers," he said.
The Central Bank has also been introducing measures to combat fraudsters for several years. In particular, since July 2024, a mandatory cooling off period for suspicious transactions has been in place. A bank is obliged to suspend a transfer for two days if it is addressed to a client whose account is in the regulator's special database. If the credit organization fails to do so, and then the person complains about the theft, he will have to reimburse the money. In the future, it is planned to extend a similar measure to the issuance of loans.
We are not talking about banning IP-telephony, but about limiting licensing, says Alexei Gorelkin, CEO of Phishman. This is necessary to make it more difficult for attackers to create and use communication companies and through them to call from abroad to mobile and landline phones, he points out.
The expert is sure that already issued licenses are not going to be canceled. In his opinion, the document not only makes life more difficult for fraudsters, but also makes it easier to catch them, and is another step toward the sovereignty of the Russian Internet.
For a year now, the majority of fraudsters' calls have been made via messengers, Igor Bederov, head of T.Hunter's investigations department, noted in his Telegram channel. There are no plans to restrict them. SIM-banks are used for spoofing phone calls, not masking (as in Internet telephony, VoIP).
- The latter are physically located in Russia... as are laying firms, acquiring firms, dropshippers. Shouldn't we fight against the extraction of money by fraudsters, instead of nominally fixing a ban on something that already doesn't exist? - wonders the expert.
It is possible to ban it, but this measure will not have a significant impact, as the technology is already outdated, says Ruslan Lozhkin, director of the cybersecurity department of Absolut Bank.
- Today, organizations do not use IP telephony, but instead encapsulate traffic in any protocol and application. There are other ways to mask traffic. Probably, with the ban on IP-telephony, fraudsters will simply switch to other technologies," he believes.
Corporate clients in Russia prefer to use IP-telephony, because this method is cheaper and more profitable than traditional methods, says Denis Kuskov, General Director of TelecomDaily. As a result, the business will have to change the algorithm of approach, increase the volume of traffic for traditional telephony, move away from the usual convenient schemes under the aegis of the fight against fraud, he argues. But in any case the market will cope with this challenge, summarized the expert.
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