A significant increase in complaints from citizens about the blocking of banking services related to being included in the list of suspicious transactions and accounts has been recorded in Russia. According to the Izvestia newspaper, citing the press service of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, the number of appeals from citizens increased by 18.3% in 2024, reaching 140,800. This is a noticeable increase compared to previous years.
The main reason for the increase in appeals was a sharp increase of 93.5% in the number of complaints related to fraud. Approximately 28% of complaints on this issue concern requests from citizens to remove their data from the database of suspicious transactions. In the first three quarters of 2024, about 5,700 people applied to the Central Bank with a request to exclude them from the database, which is twice as many as in 2023.
However, most of these applications were rejected, as banks confirmed the presence of signs of fraudulent activity. This leads to citizens losing access to remote banking services, such as internet banking or mobile payments.
The Central Bank also reported that the number of suspicious transactions decreased by 27% in the first half of 2024. This particularly affected transactions involving the withdrawal of funds abroad, which decreased by 32%, amounting to 8.4 billion rubles. The main reason for the withdrawal of funds abroad was advance payments for the import of goods.
Read materials on the topic:
Recognize by voice: Russia proposed creating a database of biometric data of telephone scammers
Scammers in Telegram have come up with a new scheme for stealing accounts from Russians
Multi-stage fraud scheme in Russia: how attackers steal money using "Gosuslugi"