You can’t give your passport to anyone, much less send out a photo of it, if you don’t want them to take out a loan for you, warned the head of the branch of the Moscow Bar Association “Zashchita” Anatoly Mironov.

According to him, most criminal loans are issued using lost and stolen passports, but there are also many cases where the victims themselves were careless.

“The main reason for applying for a loan without human participation or with participation under the influence of deception is gullibility and ignoring recommendations for maintaining financial security,” the lawyer explained to the Prime agency.

He strongly urged that you never give your passport to anyone.

“If they ask for a document to issue a pass, try to get by with a driver’s license,” the specialist advised.

You also cannot send photos or scans of passport pages. As a last resort, if someone you trust asks you to provide your passport information, you can simply rewrite it.

Never take out a loan at the request of anyone – from friends and relatives to, especially, supposedly security officers calling potential victims.

So far in Russia there is no legislative ban on obtaining a loan without the personal participation of the borrower, but it is already being prepared, the lawyer added.

“In any case, our life is primarily an area of ​​our personal responsibility. Be prudent and vigilant,” he concluded.