Finland lifts ban on transferring Yandex data to Russia -September 26, 2023 at 01:50 pm EDT

OSLO, Sept 26 (Reuters) – Finland’s data protection
regulator said on Tuesday it had lifted a temporary ban on
Russian tech group Yandex and Dutch-based partner
Ridetech from transferring to Russia the personal data of
customers of Yandex’s Yango ride-hailing app.

The emergency ban was announced in August in response to
Russian legislation which Finland at the time believed would
give Russia’s Federal Security Service the right to receive data
from Finnish users processed in taxi operations.

But the Finnish regulator on Tuesday said new information
showed that the Russian legislation did not apply to taxi
services and that the ban, which had been due to come into
effect on Wednesday, would not be implemented.

The Yango ride-hailing service, which operates in 14
countries including Finland and Norway, is one of many services
offered by Yandex, often dubbed “Russia’s Google”.

“Yango is allowed to continue operating in Finland for the
time being,” the Finnish agency said, while adding that the
monitoring of data transfers would continue in cooperation with
Norwegian and Dutch regulators.

Yango has said it processes data in strict compliance with
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and EU legislation,
and that Russia in any case had no jurisdiction over the
company’s international business.

Norway had also planned a similar ban to the one issued by
Finland but had not issued a formal order and will refrain from
doing so, a spokesperson for the Norwegian Data Protection
Agency said.
(Reporting by Terje Solsvik
Editing by Ros Russell)