The Federation Council has proposed creating child-safe SIM cards. This initiative was supported by the State Duma. “Moscow Evening” found out what its functions are and why it is needed.
Scammers, as we know, are people who even lack a conscience. They do not hesitate to choose children as victims. For many different reasons, they scam money from the parents of minors.
To protect children from unwanted calls, the Chairman of the Digital Economy Development Council of the Federal Council, Senator Artem Sheikin, proposed creating SIM cards specifically for minors. Under this initiative, they must block calls from unknown numbers and filter content on the Internet that children can access.
Sheikin's initiative was supported by Chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin. He added that the children's SIM card will give parents access to their child's geolocation.
Today, every parent must personally take care of protecting their child: connect all the necessary functions of the SIM card or install individual applications, Anastasia Khveshchenik, head of the traffic filtering software development team, an expert of the Russian corporation in the field of information security, told Vechernaya Moskva.
“Therefore, creating a SIM card specifically for children will significantly simplify people's lives: the fewer actions that need to be taken to protect children from fraudsters, the higher the likelihood that children will stay safe,” she noted. — It is possible to create such a product today. Yes, today the IT industry is still burdened with import substitution tasks. They require concentration, strict adherence to deadlines, etc. In addition, today mobile mining pools are building protection against attacks by criminal groups and scammers from unfriendly countries. In general, there are already many challenges ahead, so the only difficulty that can arise when implementing this undoubtedly important project is the allocation of experts, efforts and time to the project so that other areas in the IT sector are not affected,” Anastasia added.
Nowadays, not all adults can recognize scammers, let alone children. And this despite all the educational work and information support.
— When using a SIM card, full automation is enabled. Experts emphasize that telecommunications operators have the ability to identify threats hidden in links, so potentially dangerous websites will be blocked for children.
Modern phones can send access to geolocation even without a network connection and exchange messages in conditions of limited access to the Internet and SMS notifications. In theory, they can all be implemented on a children's SIM card.
“However, any new product requires testing and commissioning, which takes time and resources. Providing a secure Internet connection is not the problem; the technology has been in use for a long time. But testing geolocation can already take time: you need to ensure that only parents have access to it and others cannot get it, the expert notes.
When developing SIM cards for children, companies must choose what features they want to add to the card. The extent to which children are protected from inappropriate content and scammers will depend on the workload of the company's IT department and the cost of the final product.
– Any business seeks profit – this is a fact. If mobile operators are constrained by price, they will only install technologies that fit that price. Most likely, this will be basic filtering of websites and blocking calls from scammers. In my opinion, it would be right if the government somehow supported business in this matter: this way it could add more useful functions for children and parents at a more affordable price,” she noted.
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According to the Home Office, the number of children falling victim to phone and Internet scams has increased by 30% in the past two years. Thus, in 2023, almost 3.8 thousand children became victims of such crimes, in 2024 – 3.9 thousand children, and in 2025, 4.9 thousand minors suffered from these crimes.
