The base was stolen

The subscriber base of the largest cellular company Mobile Telesystems (MTS) recently became public. A CD with phone numbers and contact information of subscribers can now be bought somewhere at the Mitinsky market or similar points of sale of pirated discs.

MTS spokeswoman Eva Prokofieva told the Vremya Novostei newspaper that the company's security service conducted an investigation into this fact and has not yet discovered the source of the information leak. Access to this information in the company is clearly regulated, so its leakage due to dishonesty of any of the MTS employees is unlikely, she believes. The disk that appeared on sale contains an incomplete list of telephone numbers, so it can be assumed that data about MTS subscribers became public knowledge as a result of providing information to various structures for some requests in accordance with current legislation and regulations, Ms. Prokofieva noted. She assumes that what happened is on par with the appearance on sale and on Internet sites of similar databases of traffic police, MGTS and other cellular companies. Director of Public Relations at VimpelCom (Bee Line brand), Mikhail Umarov, also considers this reason the most likely. VimpelCom faced the same problem in 1998, when data on its one hundred thousand subscribers was recorded and distributed on CD. Today, a lot has changed (for example, the subscriber base has reached 3 million), however, the consequences of the appearance of this disk are still emerging, he said. Of course, modern hackers know how to hack the most secure systems, however, cellular companies, for their part, are taking the necessary measures to ensure the confidentiality of information about their clients, Mr. Umarov emphasized.

Nadezhda KOSTYUK