On whom and for what messengers will “knock”

So, the Government of the Russian Federation has established a procedure for identifying users of instant messengers. So, to confirm the subscriber number, the messenger user will be asked to take actions using this number, which will reliably establish that he uses the reported subscriber number when registering in the messenger. In the absence of a number in the operator’s database or no response from him, the identification is considered not passed, and the messenger refuses to provide services to the user. This procedure will begin to operate on May 6, 2019.

Thus, one of the pillars of messengers - anonymity, is a thing of the past. Why is this done?

Improving security in society? Unlikely. For precinct and police departments to solve domestic crimes? For this, resources of such power are not used - the enormous costs of mobile operators, conflicts with messengers, social discontent. The fight against terrorists? Common sense suggests that serious events are held at a certain level of conspiracy, eliminating calls and exchanging instant messengers from the phone bought in your own name. Will this make it difficult for criminals of various levels to access the messenger? Not. Take a foreign SIM card and use it. Plus, you can still buy gray SIM cards without problems in large cities.

This does not lead to a new level of security, nor does it create any qualitatively new barriers to criminal communities. They will not have to invent something and attract large resources to solve the problem of anonymity.

Binding a messenger to a subscriber can be of help in finding small hooligans or "random extremists", those who spoke out on forbidden topics. Those. either criminals - complete idiots, or ordinary people who have no thoughts to hide in their thoughts. Checking the phone by the police has already become a given. In fact, the decision simplifies the procedural steps for investigators - it’s easier to establish a binding of users to a real person .-

Issues of a legal nature arise, for example, in normative acts there are no definitions of either a “messenger” or a “sender of a message in a messenger”, due to which legal conflicts may arise. It is rather difficult to give a legally correct definition of a messenger, since the possibility of real-time messaging is provided by a wide range of programs. From the legislative point of view, the concept of “message sender” requires clarification

Or how to provide a bunch of mobile operator, application store and device. Moreover, there are many other ways for a user to register in a new messenger. It is not clear how the rules will apply to minors and legal entities. Identification of users of instant messengers can affect the citizens' right to privacy of correspondence, which is guaranteed by Article 23 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. It is not clear if only the information about the “presence or absence of information about the subscriber” will be clarified during user identification, then such identification does not really give anything. It is not clear what specific information the messengers and communication operators will exchange and how this information should be regulated in terms of protecting personal data and protecting subscriber information.

conclusions

• It is possible that crime detection will increase slightly (by 0.01% - 0.1%) due to idiots planning crimes using their own telephone.
  
• Possible increase in the cost of cellular communications
  
• Periodic conflicts of subscribers of mobile operators due to errors when interacting with instant messengers due to illegal blocking of sending messages in the messenger.
  
• The ability of law enforcement agencies to search and identify those who speak out on prohibited topics will increase significantly.
  
• Well, the economy. I put her in last place. But perhaps it would be worth mentioning this as the prevailing version. The messenger market has reached a saturation level - 83% of smartphone owners have several messaging services installed.
  
  • In the communications industry, messengers are very important. At the same time, instant messengers are completely opaque in terms of using advertising tools.
    
  • For example, 59% of smartphone users in Russia have WhatsApp installed (data at the beginning of 2018), but of course there are no relevant user data, and precisely because of the absence of any regulation regarding messengers. The development of the advertising market requires the possibility of a relevant audience assessment.
    
  • If there is regulation, the messenger market will be more attractive from the point of view of communication: from the possibility of evaluating the audience to the development of new technologies for advertising and communication interaction

What to do? I will describe in increasing order of paranoia

• The most obvious option is to put where it is possible (From the popular: Telegram / Whatsapp) two-factor authorization (In other words, add a password).
  
• Use instant messengers that claim the inviolability of your private correspondence, reinforcing your words with the possibility of conducting correspondence using end-to-end encryption.
  
• Use instant messengers that provide the source code and protocol specification for analyzing the presence of possible “bookmarks” and cryptography auditing and privacy protection mechanisms for user data. Known examples: Telegram, Signal.
  
• In principle, refuse to use instant messengers requiring a phone number for registration. These messengers must have open source code, both of the client and the server side (a federated network of public and private servers necessary for communication between clients). At the same time, they still provide such amenities as push notifications, registration on public servers (no need to bother with setting up and maintaining their server), low traffic and device battery consumption, conferences / channels and even the use of bots. Popular examples include the XMPP and Matrix protocols. Which can be used with the help of such open clients as Conversations, Xabber, Yaxim, Riot and others.
  
• Use fully decentralized solutions like Jami (Former Gnu Ring), Tox, Wire and others. Which have some inconvenience, such as a large consumption of traffic, battery resources (after all, the service must constantly keep the connection waiting for, for example, new messages), but at the same time they can provide complete anonymity and excellent privacy.
  

In the following articles it is planned to consider in more detail the last two types of instant messengers, federal and fully decentralized. For the first category, consider popular implementations of XMPP, Matrix servers, dwell on security issues (using the most up-to-date cryptographic libraries), ease of deployment on your equipment / rental facilities, and optimal use of system resources. For the second, a review will be presented on popular solutions in the field of decentralized communication, the pros and cons of various instant messengers.