Russia Blocks LinkedIn Because of Data Collection Regulations

It looks like the Russian government has decided to ban the professional networking site LinkedIn, as the service does not comply with the country’s data protection rules. The decision was made by a local court in Moscow, and even though the company will not be able to operate in Russia starting Thursday, it can actually appeal the decision. The problem is that Russian legislators passed a brand new set of rules last year that requires all personal data collected on Russian citizens to be stored on servers that are located inside the country, which would apparently protect against any hypothetical breaches.

The thing is, sources indicate that Twitter and Facebook are currently violating these rules as well, which makes it unclear why the court decided to target LinkedIn specifically. LinkedIn currently has about 467 million users, and five million of those users are in Russia. The company also issued a statement regarding these recent developments:

“The Russian court’s decision has the potential to deny access to LinkedIn for the millions of members we have in Russia and the companies that use LinkedIn to grow their businesses.”

Moreover, LinkedIn is apparently interested in meeting up with Roskomnadzor, which is the country’s Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications, in order to talk about the ban and what can be done about it.