If scammers find out your SNILS number, what can they do?

Personal data of citizens of the Russian Federation is confidential information that can only be accessed by representatives of government agencies. This is due to the fact that their illegal receipt and use is the basis for many fraudulent schemes, the implementation of which can cause significant financial losses for citizens.

Many citizens know that they should carefully monitor the safety of their personal data, especially for those indicated in the main document - the passport. However, their list is much wider. For example, these are INN and SNILS, which are available to almost every person living and working in Russia. Information about these numbers is of interest to various scammers and swindlers, who use them in a variety of criminal schemes.

General information about SNILS

The individual personal account insurance number, or SNILS for short, is a citizen’s identifier in the compulsory pension insurance system. It is to this number that employers transfer so-called insurance contributions for their employees to the pension fund. In accordance with the legislation, SNILS is assigned to all Russian citizens from birth, and to foreigners upon the fact of working in our country.

Until April 1, 2022, upon registration in the compulsory pension insurance system, citizens were issued special green plastic cards. However, after this date their issuance was stopped, although those that are in the hands of the population can be presented at the place of request.

Cheating on the Internet

The vast majority of Russian citizens use the Internet. Accordingly, scammers have penetrated here too. Today, the largest number of scams are carried out via the Internet, including those related to SNILS.

Job sites

Modern people often look for work via the Internet. Moreover, interviews can also be conducted online. Often, “personnel services” offer the candidate to fill out a false application form, in one of the fields of which you need to enter your SNILS number. Next, using the received data, pension savings are transferred to a non-state pension fund.

Non-existent payments

This is a separate type of fraud that involves the existence of a website that provides citizens with non-existent payments. Typically, users go to such resources by clicking on a banner or receiving an email. Fraudsters attract clients in the following way: a person is asked to check whether he can qualify for payments from the insurance fund. To do this, you need to fill out a simple form by entering your full name and SNILS.

After entering the data, the user will be pleasantly surprised, because he is owed a substantial amount. Most often it comes from 50 or even 100 thousand rubles. To receive payment, a citizen must pay for the services of insurers, then for data analysis services. Naturally, the victim will not receive the promised money, and the deposited funds will not be returned.

"State" website

Many citizens of the Russian Federation have not yet lost confidence in government agencies. And this is taken advantage of by scammers who create fake government service websites. Such resources are used to achieve several goals:

• collection of personal data of users in order to subsequently transfer the funded part of the pension;
• obtaining personal data of citizens for subsequent sale.

Why do scammers need a SNILS number?

The insurance number in the pension insurance system is quite specific. It is issued to citizens once and for life. It should be understood that this number alone will not allow fraudsters to carry out large-scale shadow operations.

In most cases, this type of personal data is collected for the purpose of signing fictitious contracts and illegally disposing of funds placed in pension accounts. For example, to transfer them from one non-state fund to another without the will of a citizen.

In addition, SNILS can be used as registration data for various services, including for opening fictitious electronic wallets.

The insurance pension account number cannot be used for the purpose of stealing funds from a citizen’s bank accounts, as well as for obtaining loans to him from financial institutions.
Attention! The only thing scammers can really do if they know the SNILS number is to apply for a microloan online if, in addition to the insurance certificate, they have the victim’s passport details.

How do scammers collect numbers?

Unscrupulous citizens use various tricks and tricks in order to obtain information about SNILS. It should be noted that for the most part their actions cannot be qualified as a criminal offense, since the methods they use require the voluntary consent of the subjects of personal data to transfer the necessary information to them.

Let's look at the most common ways to obtain insurance numbers.

Collection of data on behalf of the pension fund

Quite often , scammers go around the apartments and houses of citizens, where, posing as employees of the state pension fund, they declare the need to submit certain applications with the obligatory indication of SNILS.

As a rule, citizens are quite loyal to such visits and willingly sign the papers offered to them. This is due to the fact that the pension system in Russia is constantly being reformed, various kinds of changes often occur in it, so many simply do not have sufficient knowledge in the field of pension legislation.

Participation in fake opinion polls

Often, scammers pose as employees of various agencies conducting sociological surveys. At the same time, they ask you to fill out certain forms, where, among other things, SNILS is indicated.

Important! Most of the methods of real opinion polls assume the anonymity of respondents, without indicating the pension insurance number, tax identification number and other personal data.

Undoubtedly, the list of methods for collecting SNILS is much wider, since every year scammers come up with new deception schemes. However, the ones mentioned above are the most common and universal.

Restoring a child’s SNILS

We have already written above that if a green SNILS card is lost, a new card will not be issued from 2022. This also applies to SNILS of minors. Instead, the child can receive a new type of notification, which will be similar to the old green card. This can be done by his parents (other legal representatives) if the child is under 14 years of age. Children over 14 years of age can apply to the Pension Fund on their own.

You need to contact the Pension Fund or MFC in person only if you could not find SNILS or you need a paper document. To provide public services, a paper document is not required; it is important to know the SNILS number.

If SNILS is issued for the first time for a child, then to obtain it without visiting the Pension Fund office, you need to send a questionnaire to the Pension Fund body. This can be done through the employer’s personnel service or the unified government services portal by downloading the application form on the government portal. The completed form can be sent in any convenient way to the Pension Fund of Russia.

Fraud schemes

Since SNILS is the main identifier of a citizen in the pension insurance system, scammers use it to implement illegal schemes in this area.

Thus, most often, employees and agents of non-state pension funds resort to deception . The fact is that Russian legislation allows for a transition from one non-state pension fund to another when forming a funded pension. In this case, only an application with the citizen’s handwritten signature and an indication of SNILS is sufficient.

For a citizen, this state of affairs is fraught with at least a loss of investment income from placing funds in NPF accounts.

SNILS is not a document that identifies a person, however, this number can be used to register for certain services and when creating electronic wallets. Thus, scammers create fake accounts and profiles for their own, not always respectable, purposes.

What to do if they do recognize him?

What to do if scammers find out your SNILS number? Almost nothing. The police will not help - there is no evidence of a crime. The Pension Fund will not change the number - it is issued for life.

If the funded part of the pension has not yet been transferred, you must write a statement about your desire to keep it in the accounts of the previous fund. In this case, the scammers will receive nothing.

If the funds nevertheless went to another fund, an application is also written to transfer the money to the old PF, where they will return after 5 years (according to the legislation of the Russian Federation, funds can be transferred from one PF to another once every 5 years).

Safety regulations

To prevent the insurance pension number from being at the disposal of fraudsters, citizens should take care to comply with certain security rules.

Thus, all interaction with the pension fund should be carried out exclusively in the branches of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation, in the MFC or through the Gosuslugi portal. It should be remembered that its employees never conduct rounds of insured persons.

A universal rule is to carefully study each document before signing it , especially in cases where they contain confidential information related to personal data.

In general, it should be remembered that SNILS, passport data and other similar information should not be provided to third parties unless there is a legal need.

In recent years, various scammers are increasingly trying to fraudulently obtain the insurance number of a personal account with the Pension Fund of Russia. Despite the fact that significant attacks on citizens’ property cannot be expected in this case, illegal schemes invented by fraudsters can significantly affect the implementation of their pension rights in the future. In this regard, it is highly recommended not to transfer information about SNILS and other confidential data to third parties.

How to restore SNILS for an unemployed person

We have already described above what methods of restoring SNISL exist. However, citizens who are not currently working or who work for themselves (self-employed, individual entrepreneurs) cannot obtain a SNILS document through their employer. So how can they recover their data?

There are two other options left for him - contacting the Pension Fund or the MFC. Moreover, you can contact the Pension Fund digitally if you have a confirmed account in the State Services system. In this case, the procedure for obtaining a document in the ADI-REG form does not differ from the usual one.

Online manipulation

There are also scammers operating online who are eager to get your SNILS, and who, knowing this number, can also do bad things. Do not send it to a stranger by mail!!! Usually, under various pretexts, for example, the same job application, they try to extract from you a whole set of documents - passport, INN, SNILS, license, etc., which they can already use to the fullest or simply sell them.

In the most harmless case, an account will be created for you in some store or service that requires document verification. Exchange, electronic money, store, social network, credit services - you need this to carry out transactions on your behalf. Perhaps nothing terrible will happen, but attackers can do a lot using the SNILS number:

1. Cash out other people's money (yours will not be stolen).
2. Conduct illegal activities on your behalf.
3. Make air sales using your data as a cover.
4. Take a microloan.
5. etc.

Well, you understand. For an exact example, when identifying a Yandex.Money wallet, in addition to your passport data, you need to enter SNILS.

How to avoid problems

To avoid falling for scammers, citizens need to consider the following:

1. Employees of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation do not go door to door and do not “catch” citizens in supermarkets, trying to find out the SNILS number.
2. You should not count on sudden large payments.
3. No matter how profitable the offer of Pension Fund agents may be, you should not immediately agree to transfer your pension. The information received needs to be double-checked.
4. You should not dictate SNILS over the phone. Pension Fund employees do not request such information over the telephone.
5. If you need to enter your SNILS number on the website, it is better to leave it immediately.
6. When applying for a loan from a bank, you should not agree to transfer savings to a non-state pension fund of a financial organization. It is better to politely refuse the employee, promising to think about it.
7. When going to a government service website, it’s a good idea to pay attention to the address bar of your browser. If the resource address contains foreign characters, transliteration, etc., you should leave it immediately.
8. You should not use your SNILS number as a login on the State Services website.
9. You should not fill out employer forms on the Internet if the document contains fields for your passport number and SNILS.

Direction of application

What can scammers do if they know their SNILS number? To begin with, let’s conditionally divide all application methods into 2 parts:

1. NPF.
2. Application on the Internet.

In the first case, pension scammers visit your apartment in person and take SNILS in order to transfer your savings portion of your savings to their NPF. In the second, SNILS is used to confirm registration on your behalf in various Internet services.

We hasten to calm you down! As a rule, you won’t be given any credit just by using your SNILS number, and you won’t be able to incur material losses. But hidden troubles can still arise, more on that later.

Terms of production and issuance of SNILS

The law establishes deadlines for submitting documents to the Pension Fund, issuing cards to the employer and transferring them to employees. All legally established deadlines relating to SNILS are shown in the table.

What to do?

You signed the paper, but now you don’t know what to do? Calmly! Now we'll explain everything.

1. There is NO NEED to go to the police . There is no such corpus delicti under Article 159 here. It just transfers the right to your savings. Perhaps by the time the reader reads this, this point has already been corrected, and even with mass claims, something can be done, but in fact it is a waste of time. The working solution is below.
2. Let's go to the Pension Fund . Preferably the very next day as soon as they start working (they usually do the rounds in the evening). There we will find out whether we were transferred to another NPF. If you do everything quickly, then most likely there will be no translation yet. But experienced employees will tell you that it would be better to immediately write an application for a reverse transfer “just in case.” Here everyone will tell you. This action was carried out with my friend, I was present at the event personally, so it works.
3. NPF . You can also work through the non-state pension fund to which you were transferred. Provided you remember it. Here you already need to act in case of transfer of funds. But if you have already signed the paper, going to court can cost more than the transfer itself. So it’s easier to do everything in advance and through the Pension Fund.