Since September 1, 2025, Russia has introduced a self-ban on remote SIM card registration, which has made it difficult to use "gray" numbers actively used by fraudsters. This was reported to TASS by Artem Sheikin, Deputy Chairman of the Council for the Development of the Digital Economy under the Federation Council.
Now citizens can independently restrict remote SIM card registration through the "Gosuslugi" portal or the MFC. This primarily affected "gray" SIM cards, which became much more difficult to obtain. The consequence of the innovation was a decrease in the number of crimes using mobile communications.
Fraudsters mainly used "gray" SIM cards to call citizens and the SIM Swapping scheme, when SIM card identifiers (ICCID, IMSI) were transferred to someone else's SIM card. As a result, the victim lost control over their number, and all calls, messages and two-factor authentication codes were received by the attacker.