Russia has banned LinkedIn on its soil after the social network failed to satisfy the Russian telecom regulator Roskomnadzor. The regulator said it has ordered to stop LinkedIn services on Russian soil.
A statement from Roskomnadzor revealed that LinkedIn failed to satisfy it that LinkedIn meets the Russian laws requiring personal data to be stored on Russian soil.
According to LinkedIn, Russian authorities contacted wrong office for enquiry and therefore it could not explain its privacy arrangements to the Russian telecom regulator.
“LinkedIn’s vision is to create economic opportunity for the entire global workforce. We are starting to hear from members in Russia that they can no longer access LinkedIn,” the company confirmed in a statement to TechCrunch.
“Roskomnadzor’s action to block LinkedIn denies access to the millions of members we have in Russia and the companies that use LinkedIn to grow their businesses. We remain interested in a meeting with Roskomnadzor to discuss their data localization request.”
In Russia, legislation was introduced in 2014 that required social networks to store personal data of Russian citizens on Russian web servers. However, this is the first instance of law being implemented against a US-based social network.
There are over six million users of LinkedIn in Russia which has a population of about 143 million. Compared to the United Kingdom (21 million members, 64 million people) and Australia (8 million members, 24 million people), LinkedIn’s adoption rate in Russia can be termed as poor. According to experts, Roskomnadzor’s latest decision will further hit LinkedIn’s growth prospects, and deprive it of expanding its base on Russian soil.
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