For whom a smartphone calls

The prosecutor's office of St. Petersburg found an antidote from telephone scammers

Now, not only the telephone scammers themselves will be held accountable, but also companies that provide them with mobile communications with victims.

In mid -July last year, two telephone scammers called an elderly Petersburger. They introduced themselves as bank security officers, in which a woman kept 2.7 million rubles. The bank’s head office is located in Moscow, and the Moscow number was displayed at the call. Within three days, from July 19 to July 22, scammers convinced the woman to transfer their money to a safer account, from which savings disappeared safely.

According to the press service of the city prosecutor’s office, the investigator of the prosecutor's office of the Admiralty district, investigating the case of this fraud, found out that the strokes used the Internet telephone to call. Provider services were provided by Avantel.

“The district prosecutor’s office established that the telephone connection with the victim was initiated through the technical equipment of a particular mobile operator. At the same time, the callers used the butt number of the phone, the report said.

- At the same time, the Russian operator of communication, tracking telephone connections, did not take measures to block the call from the premium number.

On this fact, the district prosecutor’s office opened an administrative case against the operator of the communications under Part 2 of Art. 13.2.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation (non -fulfillment by the operator of the obligation to terminate the provision of communication services and (or) services for passing traffic to his network in cases provided for by the legislation of the Russian Federation in the field of communication). Based on the results of its consideration, the organization was brought to administrative responsibility, it was assigned a fine of 600 thousand rubles. ”

QUOTE

Lawyer Alexander Leontyev:

- The law “On Communication” really has a ban that does not allow you to replace the number. This was done just so that you can track telephone terrorists or telephone scammers. If not by the number of the caller (it can be hidden), then by the location of the subscriber. Therefore, passport data requires when designing a SIM card so that the owner of the number can be promptly calculated. In such cases, the company is quite strict to the rules. The law provides for punishment up to deprivation of a license. So such a precedent is quite capable of forcing operators of communication more attentive to those to whom they provide their services.

At the same time, IT engineer Sergei Kondratyev believes that the fact of holding even such a large provider will not affect the actions of criminals.

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Sergey Kondratyev, IT engineer:

-Not a single provider company simply does not have resources to track every call and find out where he comes from. At the same time, the providers company will most likely take certain measures. In the early 2000s, they were imposed on SORM (system of operational-search measures), which allows not only to track keywords in conversations, but also to read electronic correspondence, monitor the history of visits to Internet resources, monitor the compounds from the foci of the potential terrorist threat, etc. Moreover, all this without the knowledge of the subscriber. So you can slightly adjust the program and track the substitution numbers. But if the offender is technically enough, then it is quite easy for him to hide where exactly and from what number a call was made with a substitute number.

Alexey S., an employee of the K of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, also agree with the colleague-engineer (a division to combat crimes in the field of information technology is one of the most secret in the ministry). As the policeman explained, even if the provider will report suspicious formations in time (or simply block suspicious calls), this will not lead to the fact that telephone terrorism or telephone fraud will come to naught.

QUOTE

Alexey S., employee of the Office "K" of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation:

-Usually, telephone scammers use disposable SIM cards, which are distributed as an advertisement for mobile operators. For such a SIM card you can call ten minutes, after which they need to be formally issued, but the criminals have enough of these ten minutes. Then the SIM card is thrown away. Or they bribe an employee of the sales department of the mobile operator and through it they draw up cards for dummies. Yes, and the calls themselves are made from different places, so that the location often does not succeed in the location.

According to IT engineer and an employee of the KO management, the main medicine for telephone fraud is the vigilance of potential victims.

“No need to be afraid to look funny,” the policeman advises.

- At any call from an unfamiliar number, when someone seems to be a bank security officer or a police officer, you must immediately interrupt contact and call back to the bank or the police.

Even if, for example, they tell you that your relative, while driving, knocked someone, and with your call you can attract excessive attention (they say, then you will have to pay more money for “exceling”), it is better to call the duty unit and ask, for example, there was a accident at such and such an address. Or does they have an employee with such a surname and where he is now. It is also necessary to remember that scammers just have chic databases, and they always know the name of the subscriber, the composition of his family, age, etc.

Saint Petersburg