On November 10, 2016, the Moscow City Court upheld a decision by Moscow’s Tagansky District Court to block access to LinkedIn's professional social network within the Russian Federation for violating Russia's personal data localization law.

Amendments to Russia's personal data protection laws, effective September 1, 2015, imposed new obligations on data operators, including a requirement to store any personal data they collect about Russian citizens on equipment located within the Russian Federation. The amendments also gave Russia’s communications regulator, the Roskomnadzor, the authority to block websites and online resources that do not comply with those requirements.

LinkedIn offers an online service for professional networking used by people globally, including millions of members in the Russian Federation. In its first data localization enforcement action against a US company under the new laws, the Roskomnadzor brought an action seeking to block access to LinkedIn's website, alleging that LinkedIn violated Russian data protection laws by:

In early August 2016, the Tagansky District Court ruled in favor of the Roskomnadzor, but stayed the ban pending appeal. The Moscow City Court's decision upholding the ban paves the way for Roskomnadzor to start blocking the site.

The Roskomnadzor's data localization enforcement action sets a precedent for other US companies with websites or online services accessed by Russian citizens who have not yet taken steps to comply with the country's data localization requirements. For more on Russian data protection and localization laws, see Country Q&A, Data Protection in Russian Federation: Overview.