All brakes are off': Russia's attempt to rein in illicit market for leaked data backfires

"For more than a decade, Russia's so-called probiv market a term derived from the verb to pierce or to punch into a search bar has operated as a parallel information economy built on a network of corrupt officials, traffic police, bank employees and low-level security staff willing to sell access to restricted government or corporate databases. While leaked databases exist everywhere, the scale and routine use of probiv is uniquely Russian."

"Probiv, whose use remains controversial among Russian journalists, have underpinned high-profile investigations, including tracing the FSB state security unit behind the poisoning of Alexei Navalny. It also served the police and security services themselves, who routinely used the black market to track activists, opposition figures and anyone who fell outside the state's favour. It is one of the paradoxes of modern Russia: on the one hand, these services are illegal and rely on"

Probiv is a sprawling illicit Russian market for leaked personal data that relies on corrupt officials, traffic police, bank employees and low-level security staff selling access to restricted databases. Buyers can obtain passport numbers, home addresses, travel histories, car registrations, internal police records and, at higher cost, dossiers including metadata on calls and movements. The market grew from state corruption and became indispensable to investigators, journalists and police, despite being illegal. Probiv underpinned high-profile probes such as tracing the FSB unit behind Alexei Navalny's poisoning and also helped security services track activists and opponents. As the war in Ukraine continued, the Kremlin began treating probiv as a threat rather than a convenience.

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