Sherzod Kudbiyev speaks about hacker attacks, personal data security and cashback

Every day there are 50-60 hacker attacks on servers of the tax committee, where personal data of citizens are located, but none of them managed to enter the database, the chairman of the committee, Sherzod Kudbiyev, said in an interview with Kun.uz correspondent. He answered questions about the sale of personal information of citizens collecting cashback and how long the procedure for paying cashback will continue.

- Will the system of paying cashback to citizens in the amount of 1% of the purchase amount remain permanent, or does the Tax Committee want to stop paying cashback after some time?

- We hope that cashback payments will be maintained for a long time. Because it showed its positive result. With the help of cashback checks and the tax partner, it was possible to increase turnover by 1.6 times through online cash registers.

We have the opportunity to continue this process. Since beginning of the year, 330 billion soums of cashback have been paid to about 1.1 million citizens. I think it is appropriate to continue this system.

- Is the use of personal data of citizens collecting cashback, that is, information about the products they buy, their purchasing power and time, not sold to entrepreneurs? In general, how is the personal data of citizens protected?

- As you may have seen recently, a group appeared on Telegram and said that they hacked the servers of the Tax Committee, they have personal information, they got information of people on cashback, and they are announcing a part of it. This is completely wrong. I would like to ask our citizens through Kun.uz not to post your personal information in various groups. If you want to apply for a tax partner and cashback, you have your ID number at the top of the application. You can apply in writing.

Every citizen should protect his personal information and try not to store it in open sources. The information you provide to the state tax authorities through the tax mobile application is completely safe. We eliminate at least 50-60 Dos and DDos* attacks in a day. They try to hack from different parts of the world.

We demonstrated this when the President came on March 16. For this, a special team works 24/7. I mean, influencing the servers of the Tax Committee is not an easy task. We strive to ensure that personal information provided to the Tax Committee through our systems is kept completely secure, and we work tirelessly to do so.

We have introduced a new product so that such funds are not used improperly and one does not take off someone’s cashback. If you collect more than 1 million cashback through the STC and want to withdraw it, we have introduced the issue of mandatory identification through Face ID or e-signature and many people have noticed it. In order to collect 1 million cashback, people must have made purchases of around 100 million soums on average. That’s why we started asking them for mandatory identification. This is also being done to strengthen protection.

If you pay attention to the list of 10-15 people posted by different groups, they are collecting people’s information from different groups. We have fully ensured the security of this information. No one has access to our databases yet.

- Does the State Tax Committee use the information at its disposal for commercial purposes?

- We can definitely use it for this purpose as well. In this regard, the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers on public-private partnership was adopted. The use of information in the state tax service bodies for commercial purposes can be carried out only with the consent of the information owner. It is prohibited by law to use it without his personal consent.

- Is personal consent given when installing the add-on?

- Now it will be different. The user has to press himself that he allows the use of particular data by the tax authorities. If not, then the activity is considered illegal.

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One can watch the full interview in the video above.