Nowadays, every person, who lives in Russia, has quite a lot of documents that have become an integral part of our modern life. And each document contains so-called personal information.This is data that’s used by a person in all areas of his life, but it shouldn’t fall into the other hands. However, often we hear that person become a victim of the leakage of his personal data. People, whose data has been leaked, faced such terrible things as extortion, blackmail, threats, financial fraud, and even get involved in illegal activities without knowing it.The worst thing in the current situation is that getting a person’s passport information, phone numbers, travel history, passwords from social networks and e-mail, has become not as difficult as before, so thanks to specialized bots in Telegram. Last year the court considered about 800 cases of violation of the citizens’ privacy.
In March, new stricter legislation on the above-mentioned topic came into force. According to a survey by RT, the new strictures and regulations of Roskomnadzor have a positive effect, but the problem of personal information leakage hasn’t been completely solved.
International problem
Against the background of protest actions, not only in Russia, but also in other countries, such problem as the publication of personal information of security forces, and, in general, people who work in state structures, are increasingly gaining momentum. For example, in Belarus, during the protests, the Telegram channel NEXTA Live repeatedly published a base with the data of employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as it had already known that their surnames, first names, dates of birth and places of service were contained there. Consequently, the State Security committee of Belarus added the creators of NEXTA to the list of those, who are involved in terrorist activities.
A bit earlier, a similar situation occurred in Ukraine, where local law enforcement agencies opened a criminal case against the creators of an anonymous Telegram bot that gave out information about citizens from state bases, including copies of passports, driver’s licenses, phone numbers, tax information, email addresses, social network pages and passwords.
The situation in Russia
In the Russia the situation with illegal publication of personal information is no less acute than in the countries described above. For example, on February 2021, after the protest actions on January 23 and 31, Telegram distributed information about people, who were allegedly supporters of Alexei Navalny. In the same place, as the founder of the messenger Pavel Durov later said, there were channels “where the home addresses and phone numbers of judges, prosecutors, law enforcement officers, as well as journalists and media managers were published.”
Such publications have quite serious consequences, so, after the disclosure of the information of prosecutor Ekaterina Frolova, we recall that she was acted as a state prosecutor in the case of Navalny’s defamation of a WWII veteran, she began to receive threats, how serious they were, we don’t know, but we know that the prosecutor was granted state protection.
Obtaining passport data, information about fines, criminal records, search, migration and railway tickets, punching the car owner by the vehicle number, as well as hacking and intercepting access to accounts of well-known social networks, the list is quite impressive, but it can be continued. However, at the same time, each of the services is available in the Telegram, and for a relatively small cost for such valuable information, only about one thousand rubles.
After all, Pavel Durov announced the blocking of channels that distribute this kind of information. Such actions were most caused by the earlier appeal sent by Roskomnadzor to Telegram “about the necessity to stop the illegal distribution of personal information”.
Amendments to the Federal Law
Nevertheless, it’s clear, that such appeals won’t solve the problem. That’s why amendments to the federal law “On Personal Data” were adopted at the end of last year.
Basically, the new modifications are a tightening of the requirements for operators to obtain the consent of users to the processing of their personal information.
So, according to the new law, users shouldn’t be asked for general consent to the processing of all their information, but to send a request for each of their categories.
In addition, all operators are required to delete personal information at the first request of their owner. If the resource administration doesn’t delete the illegally published information after three days, the owner of the data has the legal right to go to court.
On March 12, Telegram conducted a mass blocking of resources that published or provided personal information, obtained in an illegal way. Among the blocked resources, there was also a very popular bot – “The Eye of God”.
What should we do?
Despite all the actions, it hasn’t been possible yet to fully resolve the issue of personal information leakage. But every citizen of the Russian Federation has a legitimate opportunity to defend their rights to confidentiality, according to the lawyer of the legal center “Man and Law”, Sergey Gorshkov.
“First of all, you need to contact any police department and write a statement to check and establish where the information came from and who provided it. After identifying the perpetrators, it can be brought to criminal responsibility, “— the lawyer explained.
As many experts noted, in many cases, criminals are initiated under Article 137 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Violation of privacy”). This article provides for liability for the illegal collection or dissemination of information about the private life that constitutes his personal or family secret.
The max. sentence for violating privacy without aggravating circumstances is small — up to two years in prison, but Article 137 of the Criminal Code is “clear and categorical,” — says Gorshkov.
