New regulatory requirements mandate that audiovisual services and online cinemas share user identifiers linked to mobile phone numbers with a government-authorized research organization. The system must ensure that the same user identifier is generated for a single phone number across different platforms.
Yandex security expert Aidar Sabirov noted that a simple hashing approach with a shared secret key would create a single point of failure for dozens of independent companies. To avoid this risk, the company collaborated with other market participants to develop a more secure data protection mechanism.
The industry participants adopted a solution based on the Oblivious Pseudorandom Function (OPRF) protocol. This cryptographic scheme prevents the tracking of users via their phone numbers while meeting the legal requirements for data transmission to the research entity.
