Russian banks ask Roskomnadzor to allow them to communicate with customers via Telegram

This was stated by the vice-president of the association Alexey Voylukov. He pointed out that in conditions when, against the background of sanctions, the services of many Russian banks were removed from the application stores, messengers turned out to be a convenient replacement.

The Association explained that Telegram does not process the payment and does not operate with personal data, but simply transfers it to an external browser where operations are performed. Its action is similar to the work of online banking directly through the browsers Safari, Chrome, IE, Edge.

According to Kommersant, Roskomnadzor's claims to the Telegram messenger became known in January of this year. The department indicated that banks do not have the right to send messages to customers through such foreign resources.

However , the head of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation Elvira Nabiullina objected that, according to the regulator, there are no big risks in using the Telegram messenger for banks. At the same time, the Central Bank recognizes that this messenger has recently been frequently used by scammers. Their activity has increased many times over the past year.

Trying to steal money from bank customers, attackers resort to sending phishing messages, making fraudulent calls allegedly from banks or government agencies. To disguise their intentions, they actively use number substitution programs.

After representatives of domestic communication networks began massively blocking the communication channels of scammers with their potential victims, the attackers switched to using foreign numbers, the appearance of which resembles Russian ones. To combat the flurry of fraud, banks have proposed a separate program that provides for freezing money in accounts if fraud is suspected.