Russian wireless providers say customers are safe from spying

Executives at the four major Russian cellular providers say none have cooperated with third parties or allowed them to eavesdrop on customers' telephones. Executives of MTS, MegaFon, VimpelCom (operating under the Beeline trademark) and Rostelcom made the comments Wednesday at a conference examining the possibility of foreign intelligence services accessing Russians' telephone conversations, ITAR-Tass reported. MegaFon's director of legal issues Anna Serebryannikova said all the services the carrier provides are strictly regulated by law. "We ensure a hundred percent privacy of communications and full protection of personal data," she said. However, she said, the same protection did not necessarily apply to MegaFon subscribers who used other services such as Facebook or Skype. "We don't know this and don't have access to them," she said. "We simply see the IP traffic that flows through our nets and the fact quite naturally puts us in the face of threats and problems." VimpelCom executives said the company abides by all requirements specified in Russian law. "Our services have reliable protection but we can't guarantee equally reliable protections for the services coming from servers abroad," Dmitry Kononov, head of VimpelCom's department for coordination with the agencies of state power, said.