Technologies of distrust – Newspaper Kommersant No. 65 (7510) of 04/14/2023
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This week, Gosuslugi, a service whose uniqueness every official likes to remember, radically changed its image for millions of Russians. To the point that a war of sarcastic memes swept across the Internet. The search query “how to remove “Government Services”” entered the top 20 most popular in Google. Citizens’ interest in finding the “delete account” button was triggered by an unexpected coincidence of two events, one of which would easily have passed unnoticed if the second had not happened.
At the end of March, the very opportunity to delete an account disappeared from the service. The explanations of the Ministry of Digital Affairs, which referred to the protection of users from account hacking, looked awkward and unconvincing, but nothing more. But at the beginning of the week, a much more high-profile event took place – new military registration rules, according to which summonses will be sent, including through the State Services. It was then that the citizens of draft and mobilization age panicked.
To the credit of the Ministry of Digital Development, the treasured button is back. And this, by the way, can again be a way to deal with scammers, but much more reasonable: ads have already appeared on Avito with a proposal to delete an account on Public Services. Prices, however, are symbolic – 150-500 rubles. This time, the Ministry of Digital Transformation considered the explanations unnecessary, Minister Maksut Shadayev only urged users “not to worry” and even announced that “the notification of the agenda on the State Services could be turned off.”
But Mintsifra also had technical reasons to give users back the opportunity to get rid of their accounts. The fact is that applications hosted in the App Store and Google Play, according to the rules of the sites, are required to give users the opportunity to delete an account. Otherwise, the State Services themselves will be deleted. And their image is already under threat.
They tried to integrate as many services as possible into the main federal portal, so that the Russian simply did not have a chance not to create an account there. And the state succeeded: by August 2022, the number of accounts exceeded 98 million. But every year, the trust of Russians in their “digital personalities” decreased in proportion to the development of the portal. In 2020, with the outbreak of COVID-19, users learned that through the “Gosuslugi” it is possible to control whether they are infected and where they are. Now they understand that all the data left in the account will be in the military registry.
A new initiative – electronic passports with identity verification at the State Services – in such conditions is also unlikely to become a hit. Suffice it to recall that paying for travel in transport using facial biometrics has not gained popularity: in 2022, about 220 thousand users connected to the system, with a population of Moscow of more than 13 million people. So in the near future we will rather see a decrease in the number of portal users. And they will not be afraid of scammers.
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