Translated material
Online gamers will be deprived of anonymity
The requirement for mandatory identification of users by phone number will apply to online games and social networks. At the request of law enforcement authorities, user data may be transferred to them. Such an order was made by the Security Council of the Russian Federation to the Ministry of Communications and the FSB, RBC reports .
From January 1, 2018, amendments to the law will come into force, according to which messengers will have to carry out such identification. Messenger owners will enter into agreements with mobile operators and request mobile phone numbers from users in order to further identify them through the operator's database. Rules for social networks and online games must be developed before June 1, 2018.
The authorities explain the desire to identify users by the fact that terrorists communicate through social networks and chats in games.
As of October 2017, the monthly audience of the social network VKontakte in Russia is 41.3 million people, Odnoklassniki - 27.5 million, Facebook - 19.1 million. According to the StreamPub game project, in Russia there were 47 million users of online games in 2016.
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