What to do if debt collectors make threats on social networks? How to protect yourself from creditors on social networks Collectors post comments about personal information on the Internet.
What should I do if debt collectors start posting negative things about me on social networks? Is it possible to punish them for such actions?
Answer: It is difficult to punish them, but it is possible. The legislation provides for administrative liability for insults and criminal liability for threats.
Administrative responsibility. This area is regulated by Article 5.61 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation. It states that for insults expressed in humiliation of dignity, citizens are fined in amounts from 1 to 3 thousand rubles, persons in the performance of official duties - from 10 to 30 thousand rubles.
It is noteworthy that if such an insult is inflicted in the media or in a public speech, then the amount of fines increases exponentially. Thus, guilty citizens can pay in such circumstances from 3 to 5 thousand rubles, and persons in execution - from 30 to 50 thousand rubles. If an organization is caught in such a violation, the fine can be ruinous - from 100 to 500 thousand rubles.
Criminal liability. This area is regulated by Article 119 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. It provides for penalties for threats to cause serious harm to health (collectors cannot promise greater punishment). If such threats are received, no matter in what form - by telephone or through social networks, then the person making the threat can be sentenced to at least compulsory labor for up to 480 hours, and at a maximum - imprisonment for up to 2 years.
How to act
To punish debt collectors who insulted or threatened you, you should collect evidence. To do this, transfer all messages from social networks to paper, while simultaneously saving all “correspondence” in cloud storage so that confirmation of the violation remains.
Carefully analyze the entire test, looking for direct and hidden insults and threats. If the collectors did not mince words, then you can immediately write a statement to law enforcement agencies with a request, firstly, to find who is threatening (the police have a special department), and secondly, to bring him to justice. The police themselves will determine whether it is a violation or a crime, and then take action.
If they do not take any action, then they should go up to the prosecutor’s office and write a complaint to it.
It may happen that the insults are veiled. Then linguists should be brought in to analyze the text of the message and give a conclusion about the presence of a gross violation of ethics. In the future, this conclusion can be used in court.
Probably, many of our readers know how people resolved financial disputes in the distant 30s of the last century. Most often, these were criminal showdowns (using the example of Don Vito Corleone), or specially trained people were hired (world-class athletes in special disciplines) who literally “knocked” money out of malicious defaulters, often under threat of death. Over the years, society has improved, political regimes have changed one after another, but some surviving traditions still remain. We call people who settle debt problems not in favor of the debtors “collectors.”
Why this historical retreat? Today we can see how the banking community takes advantage of the availability of information on social networks. And it does this in order, of course, to get its money back. One of our readers from VKontakte recently encountered such arbitrariness. Let's start, as usual, with the origins of the problem:
Hello Sasha. Recently, a friend of mine received a message with the following content from a certain Banker Informant...
From Banker Informant? What is this, the code name for VKontakte collector bots? If they wanted to remain unnoticed, they came up with something like “Vasya Pupkin” or “Pavel Durov” - there are tens of thousands of users with such names on the social network. The guys act absolutely openly and with impunity. But let’s not focus on the lack of imagination of the creators of this instrument, but let’s find out what they wrote?
This, dear readers, is the height of arrogance. It’s one thing to encourage caring people to help those in need, and another when a certain bank (we have not yet been able to find out what kind of bank it is) gives out data about the user’s financial problems to his friends. It is unlikely that the average client of a social network really wants his acquaintances to know that he has a loan. The inhumanity of some “business sharks” sometimes reaches its limit.
This is probably not the first victim of the insidious Banker Informant: 
This bot has a suitable education for its work. Apparently, the internship at the Department of Operational Investigative Activities of the Internal Affairs Directorate takes place on VKontakte in the prestigious position of a collector. Some may accuse the administration of the social network of colluding with the banks - they say that Tsyplukhin sits on the board of directors of Tinkov’s bank, and Durov levitates over the Gazprombank building in the mornings. It seems to us that this is absurd - at headquarters, the interests of users have always been and will be in first place, as Pavel has repeatedly stated.
By the way, about Tinkov. We recently wrote about how Tinkoff Credit Systems Bank is trying to get precious money from the debtor. 15,000 rubles by sending messages in Odnoklassniki to all the user’s friends. What can you do, you have to pay the migrants who clean Oleg’s yacht. True, these threats looked more specific and harsher than those of our Banker: 
Here's how everything is official: an application to the Department of Internal Affairs, and contact information for the bank. And for some reason Tinkov does not take into account the fact that when committing such actions the constitutional rights of a citizen of the Russian Federation are violated:
Article 23 Part 1 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation:
Everyone has the right to privacy, personal and family secrets, protection of their honor and good name.
Proving this may be difficult, but telling all of a person’s financial problems to all his friends (and no one wants this) can lead to a criminal offense:
Article 137 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation:
Illegal collection or dissemination of information about the private life of a person, constituting his personal or family secret, without his consent, or dissemination of this information in a public speech, publicly displayed work or the media - is punishable by a fine of up to two hundred thousand rubles...
We see the dissemination of information about the private life of a citizen without his consent in the case of both VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. And if in the first we do not know the person who disseminated the information, in the second there is even a telephone number. A compelling reason for a lawsuit?
After consulting with a lawyer, we discovered another document:
Law on Banks and Banking Activities, Article 26:
A credit organization, the Bank of Russia, an organization performing the functions of compulsory deposit insurance, guarantee the secrecy of transactions, accounts and deposits of their clients and correspondents.
Mr. Tinkov, what kind of outrage?
In general, gentlemen, try to pay off your debts on time, otherwise one day someone will tell all your Twitter followers about them in replays. Maybe, He is watching over you.
In an attempt to get payment from debtors, collectors are choosing increasingly sophisticated methods: in addition to constant calls, they harass them on social networks. Moreover, sometimes messages are received not only by debtors, but also by their friends. "Your friend from" In contact with “I owe money. Could you write to him so that he can give it to him?” - such a message recently received Member of the board of directors of the “My Business” service Oleg Anisimov, who has more than 1,600 friends. The Village learned from a lawyer how legal this behavior of debt collectors is and how to respond to it.
Part 1 of Article 23 of the Russian Constitution states: “Everyone has the right to privacy, personal and family secrets, protection of his honor and good name.” One day, in the vastness of Russia, a community of “specialists” called “collectors” appeared. It exists to this day, although their activities are still not regulated by law. So far, only the draft law “On activities for collecting overdue debts” has been published. Not being specialists, debt collectors use a wide variety of sophisticated methods of putting pressure on debtors, often without understanding the prospects of liability for their actions.
So, recently, as one of the methods, collectors began to use mailings and calls to friends and acquaintances of debtors with a request to the latter to “ask their debtor friends to pay off the debt.” It would seem that what could be more stupid and what does friends and acquaintances have to do with it? But it's not that simple. This technique is used to disgrace the debtor in front of his friends and acquaintances, colleagues: they say that he does not pay his debts, you should not trust him. As a result, trust in the unfortunate debtor decreases and his reputation is tarnished.
Such messages and calls are criminally punishable. Perhaps the collectors don’t know or think that they can get away with it, but liability for such actions is provided for in Article 137 of the Criminal Code, and such actions are classified as “violation of privacy.” According to Part 1 of this article, the offender faces a fine of up to 200 thousand rubles or imprisonment for up to two years, together with a whole range of other encumbrances. The norm of criminal law recognizes the illegal collection or dissemination of information about the private life of a person as a violation of privacy.
The process may take a lot of time, but the result is worth it
Everything is clear with the collection, because the data was received from the bank, but the issue of disseminating the information remains open. It is illegal to disclose this data to others without the consent of the person about whom the information is being disseminated.
Otherwise, the victim has the right to contact the investigative authorities. It is advisable to comply with jurisdiction, but this is not necessary. Any investigative body is obliged to accept the application. When talking with an official, you should directly indicate the presence of a crime under Article 137 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Investigators are reluctant to listen to lengthy explanations about how “someone wrote something about you on social networks.” Especially on social networks. Therefore, you need to speak to the investigator in a language he understands.
Next, the investigative authorities will take a set of measures to detect and identify the distributor of such information. The process may take a lot of time, but the result is worth it. In addition to suppressing such actions and punishing the villains, you can, through criminal or civil proceedings, demand compensation for moral damage suffered. Identifying a violator is not as difficult as it seems, even if the violator acts anonymously via the Internet. At the request of investigative authorities, information about the IP address is provided by the provider in order to identify the offender. Next, the investigator authorizes actions to detect the real address of the offender and establish his identity. Such violators will face complete defeat in court. Of course, to competently explain your legal position, it is better to hire a lawyer who specializes in this type of case.
Sometimes, in an effort to achieve their goals, some people stop noticing the cost of achieving results. In such cases, it becomes an intrigue as to who will now answer to whom.
