Roskomnadzor Continues Crackdown on Unregistered SIM Cards

Telecom operators, at the request of Roskomnadzor (RKN), are asking subscribers to confirm their personal information—or risk having their number blocked. Companies are notifying customers via SMS, push notifications, and messages in their personal accounts about the need to provide their full name, date of birth, and passport number within 15 days. This can be done remotely through a personal account, on the Gosuslugi portal, or in person at mobile service stores. This measure is aimed at combating the use of unregistered (“gray”) and corporate SIM cards.

In 2021, amendments to the “On Communications” law came into effect, requiring operators to register end-user data for SIM cards in the Unified Identification and Authentication System (ESIA).

“Roskomnadzor is responsible for monitoring the accuracy of subscriber information entered by telecom operators into their databases. To this end, the agency has developed a special information system that automatically monitors the reliability of such data,” a Roskomnadzor representative told Vedomosti.

A similar verification campaign to update subscriber data was already conducted in April of this year. Since 2018, more than 423,000 unregistered SIM cards have been seized in Russia, including 152,000 in 2022 alone.

It is noted that this time, up to 7 million SIM cards registered improperly could be blocked.