MTS Future Crew: Membrana Application for subscriber's digital footprint protection

The main articles are:

• DLP - Data Loss/Leak Prevention
• Mobile apps
• Antiviruses
• Antispam technology

2025

Launch of "Smart SMS Filter"

PJSC, MTS digital ecosystem, March 31, 2025 announced the launch of the Smart SMS Filter function for users of the Membrana application. The solution using semantic text analysis independently recognizes intrusive, advertizing for example, messages about discounts and promotions, blocks them and brings to the subscriber only important SMS messages from companies and. state institutions

Unlike most SMS filters that block advertising SMS by sender number, the Smart SMS Filter built into the Membana application thanks to a combination of two factors: semantic text analysis using AI, as well as analysis of the sender's address, distinguishes annoying and intrusive advertising from useful messages received by the subscriber from companies and departments.

"Smart SMS Filter" works as follows: after receiving an incoming message to the MTS SMS center, it sends it to the Membrana platform, then, if the message is sent from a short or letter number, the platform analyzes its content for spam, and then decides whether to block it or bring it to the user. In this case, messages sent to the subscriber from ordinary numbers (DEF, ABC), including foreign numbers, are not filtered.

The training of the ML model, which underlies the Smart SMS Filter function, was carried out by a team from a data scientist and two Membrana product markers. Training the model took several months and required marking and rechecking 18 thousand messages from the SMS training base, which were then uploaded to the model. The number of errors in the solution is minimized: the proportion of false positive errors, that is, situations in which an important message is marked as spam, is less than 1%, false negative - 8%.

SMS is an important communication channel for the subscriber. With the help of it, he receives important messages from government banks agencies, the operator, etc. But this channel is most often clogged with annoying and useless messages, due to which the subscriber misses an important one for him. information For example, a reminder from the bank to pay the fee by. to mortgage To solve the problem, we trained for Membrana our own ML model to distinguish important SMS from annoying ones using semantic text analysis, "explained Pavel Loginov, director of the Membrana product.

The "Smart SMS Filter" service is connected by the user independently in the Membrana application. As of March 2025, Membrana is available for subscribers from Moscow and the Moscow region, in the near future the tariff will connect all MTS subscribers. The cost of using Membrana is 1900 rubles. per month. Developers are increasing the capabilities of the product. The list of upcoming updates includes a subscriber's cloned voice avatar, deepfake protection and other features.

Launch a mobile application

On January 24, 2025, MTS announced the launch of a mobile application that allows you to control the filtering of Internet traffic and incoming voice calls, as well as a premium communication tariff. The tariff includes unlimited access to VKontakte, Telegram and RuTube, 100 Gb/month for all other services and 2000 minutes for calls.

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Фото: futurecrew.ru

According to the company, Membrana is a product developed by the MTS Future Crew Innovation Center. The application allows you to protect the subscriber's digital footprint with high-tech and patented ad blocking tools, profiling and behavior tracking scripts, spam protection, viruses and unauthorized privacy intrusions. Privacy is ensured simultaneously in two directions - the protection of client data and voice traffic.

The application works with its own algorithm to identify suspicious harmful and sites. Blocking advertizing is carried out in any form - images, videos and texts, so that the user can view the pages of sites video content without pop-up ads. In the Membrana application, you can view statistics of blocked threats and saved gigabytes of Internet traffic and time at any time. Unlike other offers on the market, content filtering in Membrana is implemented not on the device, but on the network of the telecom operator, due to which it works much faster and does not discharge. accumulator smartphone Membrana filters Internet traffic according to web address blacklists. As of January 2025, there are about 500 thousand resources in the Membrana black list, and their list is constantly expanding.

Membrana also protects users during voice communications: the client can choose those contacts with whom he wants to communicate in person and define policies for everyone else. Inboxes can be sent to an AI secretary who is able to maintain a conversation and make decisions on his own. The AI secretary is able to prioritize calls - he determines the caller, the subject of the call. If the call is critical, the secretary will transfer it to the client, according to the settings of the profile and contact groups.

The client can create contact groups for different tasks, to which different behavior policies will be applied - family, work, friends, delivery couriers, and so on. Configuring contact groups (control of incoming call traffic) is a unique feature. For example, in working mode, the AI secretary will receive calls only from colleagues and business partners - the settings provide the subscriber with maximum flexibility. Also, the AI secretary at Membrana knows how to adapt to the situation and understand the context - for example, if a courier calls and the question is urgent, the call will be transferred to a person, despite the "do not disturb" mode enabled.

Membrana also allows you to hide the user's main phone number: the product will provide a number of additional numbers, the leakage of which does not threaten the user and will not give anything to attackers. Additional numbers can be used to create unrelated accounts in online services and thus reduce the risk of profiling a person according to unified contact data. You can manage replacement numbers directly in the application.

To protect user data from leaks, Membrana monitors external sources containing various leaked client databases. If the phone numbers and e-mail addresses of the Membrana user are found in these databases, the application informs that the account in a particular Internet service may be compromised, and gives specific recommendations for eliminating privacy violations, such as the need to change the email address, password, etc.

The Membranana developers also took care of the increased security of the application itself: before the start of beta testing, it was tested by white hackers for resistance to hacking. White hackers will work with Membrana in 24/7 mode so that user data is as protected as possible.

The cost of using Membrana is 1900 rubles. per month. While the product is available for connection in Moscow and the Moscow region, later it is planned to expand the geography of users.

The developers are intensively increasing the capabilities of Membrana: it is planned to expand the set of options related to privacy and environment management by the end of 2025. The list of upcoming updates includes temporary mail, an SMS filter, a subscriber's cloned voice avatar, voice camouflage, deepfake protection and other functions.

As of January 2025, users' need for privacy and its protection is greater than ever. Our solution is an opportunity for customers to control their data, managing privacy on the network at their discretion. Membrana filters all traffic that arrives on a smartphone or tablet, be it incoming calls or gigabytes of data on the Internet. And Membrana does this not on the device, but on the network, which provides protection against threats and web tracking, while speeding up web surfing for the user, and also slows down energy consumption on the device's battery. told Evgeny Chereshnev, CEO of MTS Future Crew Innovation Center