A bill drafted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs requires mobile electronic communications service providers to identify users, including those with prepaid SIM cards. Citizens of the Republic of Moldova will be required to provide data from their identity document—last name, first name, and IDNP—which will be verified through the “State Population Register” information system. Foreign citizens will be required to present an identity document issued by their country of origin.
User identification can be performed using several methods: at points of sale, online, via mobile signature, or through other digital means of identification. Until the identification process is complete, the SIM card can only be used for basic services, such as calls to the 112 emergency service and access to the identification portal.
Data collected during the identification process will be stored for the entire duration of service use and for an additional 12 months after service termination to facilitate user identification in the event of potential investigations.
A Controversial Issue
The bill will be submitted to Parliament for consideration in the second reading. Once adopted, the new provisions will take effect 12 months after publication in the Official Gazette. The transition period will allow operators to adapt their internal systems, develop digital solutions for remote identification, and allocate the resources necessary to implement the new requirements. This provision raised questions among lawmakers—they believe that such a period is too long, and delaying the law’s implementation by an entire year leaves loopholes for fraudsters, who could use this time to buy up anonymous SIM cards in bulk for future use.
According to statistics, there are nearly 1.6 million active prepaid SIM cards in Moldova, accounting for 42.7% of all mobile connections.
Over the past five years, financial fraud and phishing campaigns—including a scheme known as “a relative has been in an accident”—have caused damages estimated at up to 100 million lei. According to authorities, such fraud is often facilitated by the creation of fake accounts on platforms such as Viber, WhatsApp, and Telegram, using anonymous phone numbers. Prepaid SIM cards are also used in smuggling activities at the border, including for remotely controlling drones via mobile networks. In such cases, it is often difficult to identify the operators. Over the past five years, 129 incidents of this type have been documented.
