Telephone scammers primarily concentrate on the country's largest agglomerations — Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as industrial centers, southern and Far Eastern regions. This was reported to RIA Novosti by Anton Nemkin, a member of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy.
Metropolitan cities attract attackers with a high population density, income level, and active use of digital services — even a small percentage of successful attacks yields a tangible financial result. Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Kazan, and Krasnodar are also at increased risk: a high concentration of entrepreneurs and self-employed individuals expands the range of scenarios — from calls allegedly from the bank's security service to pseudo-checks by law enforcement agencies.
A separate trend in recent months has been the increase in attacks on rapidly growing southern and Far Eastern regions, including Rostov-on-Don and Vladivostok. Scammers adapt legends to regional specifics: deliveries, customs payments, investments, and cryptocurrency schemes.
At the same time, the geography of calls is determined not so much by the victim's place of residence as by personal data leaks and the operation of automated dialing systems with number spoofing and elements of artificial intelligence. This means that a resident of almost any region can fall into the risk zone — it is enough that his number appears in leak databases or public announcements.
As protective measures, Nemkin named a self-ban on loans, notifications of financial transactions, and refusal to transfer codes from SMS to third parties.
Read more materials on the topic:
- Scammers have come up with a new scheme: Russians are lured into fake polyclinic chats
- All those who could be deceived have already been deceived: telephone scammers complain about a decline in successful attacks by 15–20%
- They will write off everything: Russians were warned about a new scheme for stealing money through "cancellation of subscriptions"
