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Russian watchdog scrutinizes Burger King, P&G for compliance with personal data law

The results of the audit will be announced in the second half of February

© Artiom Geodakyan/TASS

MOSCOW, January 28. /TASS/. The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media is putting Burger King and Procter & Gamble under the microscope to see if they are complying with Russian legislative requirements on personal data storage, the regulator’s deputy head Yury Kontemirov told reporters.

The results of the audit will be announced in the second half of February.

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Russian telecom watchdog opens probe against Twitter, Facebook over breach of law

"Right now, checks are underway for Procter&Gamble and Burger King. They are checking localization-related issues for these companies. The results will be revealed in the second half of February," he assured.

The law on personal data entered into force in Russia on September 1, 2015. Under it, both domestic and foreign companies need to store personal data of Russians in Russia.

On January 21, Russian telecom watchdog launched administrative cases against US-based Twitter and Facebook over non-compliance with the law on localizing personal data of Russian users in Russia.

An official with the regulator said that the companies, controlling Facebook and Twitter social networks, had provided formal answers to the agency’s demands to confirm the localization of personal data bases of Russian users in Russia. They neither contain particular information on actual implementation of the legislation at the moment nor on the timeframe of fulfilling these norms in the future.

In December 2018, telecom watchdog’s chief Alexander Zharov sent notices to the companies regarding the need to comply with Russian legislation in the user data sphere. So far, the companies have failed to localize their databases of users in Russia.

According to Zharov, the companies should either present legally significant answers or not respond, which means "no." In case of a negative answer he vowed to open an administrative case, impose a fine of 5,000 rubles ($75) and fix the deadline for localization of data by them, from six months to one year.

Kontemirov recalled that the telecom watchdog invited Twitter representatives to meet in January to discuss the implementation of the Russian law.

"They wrote that they could not. Now we are waiting for news from them with a proposal for specific dates when they can," he added.

The acting deputy head of the telecom watchdog also noted that representatives of the Linkedin social network, which was blocked in 2016 for non-compliance with the law on the localization of personal data storage, did not contact the agency about unlocking. There were also no appeals on this issue from the office of Microsoft.

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