Russia’s federal censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, has proposed requiring mobile operators in the country to report which SIM cards are being used in roaming mode, in order to enforce new restrictions on WhatsApp and Telegram accounts registered to those numbers.

In an interview with Izvestia, agency head Andrey Lipov said that despite the government’s recent moves to block voice calls on WhatsApp and Telegram, phone scammers “haven’t given up” and are now using Russian SIM cards while abroad to continue their operations. As part of a broader crackdown, Roskomnadzor is also pushing operators to “clean up their databases of fake users.”

“We’ve started working with mobile providers to ensure they report roaming SIM cards to our platforms, including messaging services, in real time,” Lipov said. “This would allow platforms to impose temporary or partial restrictions on accounts registered with those SIMs.”

At the same time, he emphasized the need to create exceptions for “law-abiding Russian citizens traveling abroad for vacation or work.”

Lipov also suggested that it would be “logical” for messaging platforms to automatically restrict incoming calls from foreign numbers linked to non-Russian SIM cards. In such cases, users would only receive the call if they had manually added the number to a whitelist.

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