State Duma passes law to combat telephone fraud

*** Banks to restrict ATM cash withdrawals when fraud is suspected

MOSCOW. March 25 (Interfax) - The State Duma approved at its second and third (final) readings a bill introducing measures to combat cyberfraud on Tuesday.

BANKS

According to the law, financial institutions must provide clients with the opportunity to grant a third party the status of an authorized person to confirm fund transfers from bank accounts to third parties and cash withdrawals by individuals from their accounts opened with the credit institution, including via ATMs.

According to the law, an operation requiring confirmation by an authorized person must be confirmed or rejected by the specified person within 12 hours from the moment the credit institution's notification about the client's commissioning of the specified operation is sent to such person, unless a shorter timeframe is contractually agreed.

Card-issuing banks must verify whether ATM cash withdrawals occur without client consent. The Central Bank will define suspicious transaction patterns and publish the information on its official website. If such patterns are detected, banks must limit cash withdrawals to 50,000 rubles daily for 48 hours and immediately notify the client.

The bank will be required to limit cash withdrawals using ATMs in the amount of up to 100,000 rubles per month, "if the Central Bank receives information from the database on cases and attempts to make money transfers without the voluntary consent of the client," the law says.

It also "takes into account the proposals of digital platforms, including aggregators, telecom operators and ad sites regarding the use of personal biometric data. The final version prescribes the right, not the obligation, to introduce this factor in identification," State Duma Information Policy Committee Chairman Sergei Boyarsky said on his Telegram channel.

MESSENGERS

The law prohibits use of foreign-owned messengers by government agencies, the Central Bank of Russia, securities market professionals, investment fund managers, insurance companies, non-state pension funds, depositaries, trading organizers, pawnshops, microfinance organizations, cooperatives, financial or investment platform operators and digital asset exchange or issuance operators.

The ban on using foreign messengers to inform citizens will affect subjects of the national payment system, telecom operators, owners of aggregators of goods and services, as well as websites, pages and services that are visited daily by more than 500,000 users in Russia and which distribute advertisements in Russian or other national languages. A similar ban is also being introduced for owners of advertising services with traffic of more than 100,000 people. This concerns services with adverts for purchasing, selling or leasing property, providing services, or searching for jobs or employees.

The restriction also applies to companies and enterprises where the government's share is more than 50%.

SPAM

According to the law, mass telephone calls are permitted only upon receiving consent from subscribers, "expressed through actions that unambiguously identify the subscriber and reliably confirm their willingness to receive mass calls." At the same time, the subscriber has the right to notify the telecom operator of their refusal to receive mass calls and notifications, and the operator is obliged to stop them after receiving such refusal.

Furthermore, the law obliges telecom operators to send information about the calling company to the subscriber's phone.

SIM cards, according to the law, may be transferred to family members, close relatives, and other persons to be determined by the Russian government.

A ban is also introduced on sending SMS messages during an active phone call. Such messages may be delivered to the subscriber only after the call ends.

The law also establishes a ban on the import into Russia of foreign-made satellite communication devices that do not have a decision from the State Commission on Radio Frequencies on the allocation of frequency bands.

Different effective dates are provided for various provisions of the law.