The immigration service of the Indonesian island of Bali has begun using special algorithms to find foreigners who are violating the country's residency rules. According to Russian publications citing the Telegram channel Baza, a new cyber unit is monitoring Russian-language chats and identifying those who are trying to engage in commercial activities on a tourist visa.
Advertisements for subletting villas or finding roommates for shared rentals are being monitored. Under Indonesian law, this is considered a commercial activity, which is prohibited for tourist visa holders. According to the publication Versia, the Ngurah Rai Immigration Office confirmed the creation of such a unit back in October. Its task is to identify violations before conducting on-site inspections.
There are several known cases where such surveillance has led to expulsion from the country. A young woman from Kazan named Lidia told journalists that she wanted to help the owners of a house find new tenants after she left and posted an ad in a chat. An immigration officer, posing as a regular user, responded to it. The woman was then summoned for questioning, where she was offered the option to pay a large sum to avoid deportation. She refused to pay the bribe and was forced to leave Indonesia.
Vlada, a resident of Krasnodar, faced a similar situation. She posted a message in a chat looking for a female roommate to share a villa in order to save money on housing. The ad was online for only a couple of hours, but that was enough for the authorities to react: the woman was summoned for questioning, after which she was also deported from the island.
The authorities have tightened control over compliance with visa rules. Since the beginning of 2024, two thousand tourists have been expelled from Bali for illegal commercial activities. By comparison, 400 deportations were recorded for all of 2023.
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