A Moscow Magistrate’s Court has fined messenger WhatsApp, social media Snapchat, online dating app Tinder, streaming service Spotify, and the online booking website Hotels.com for refusing to localise the data of its Russian users, report Russian news agency Interfax and state news agency RIA Novosti.
The company Match Group LLC, which owns Tinder, was fined two million rubles (€32,632); the company Snap Inc., which owns Snapchat, got a fine of one million rubles (€16,316). According to the court’s ruling, the companies are guilty of “failure by the operator to fulfil the requirement established by the Russian Federation Law on Personal Data during the collecting of personal data process on providing recordings, systematisation, collection, storage, clarification (updates, changes), or extraction of personal data of the Russian Federation nationals with the usage of databases located on the territory of the Russian Federation”.
The company WhatsApp LLC, which owns WhatsApp, was fined 18 million rubles (€294,693). This is the second fine for refusing to localise users’ data for the company, thus, according to the ruling, “repeated commission of the administrative offence”. The first fine for this offence was received by the company back in August 2021. Then, a Moscow district court ruled that WhatsApp would have to pay four million rubles (€65,265).
Spotify was found guilty of the same offence, but received a fine of only 500,000 rubles (€8,158). According to the Administrative Code, the minimal fine for this offence for legal entities is one million rubles (€16,316).