Russia imposes fine on US-tech giant Apple for failing to store Russian citizen’s personal data

Russia has punished American tech giant Apple for neglecting to maintain “personal data of Russian individuals” on servers located in Russia, according to reports.

The sentence comes amid a broader crackdown by Russia on Western digital firms following the invasion of Ukraine, which has seen Twitter blocked and “extremist” groups like Facebook and Instagram banned.

The Tagansky District Court in Moscow fined Apple 2 million rubles ($34,000) for failing to localise the data of Russian citizens.

The fine is Apple’s first-ever such punishment in Russia.

Apple formally informed Russia’s communications watchdog Roskomnadzor in December 2018 that it had relocated its data on Russian residents to servers there.

As the first business to comply with the Kremlin’s new regulations forcing international technology companies to localise their activities in the nation, Apple also launched a representative office in Russia in February.

Apple, however, stopped all product sales and restricted the availability of several of its services, including Apple Pay, in Russia when the Kremlin ordered soldiers into Ukraine on February 24.

Additionally, Apple withdrew RT and Sputnik News from its App Store outside of Russia.

Separately, on Tuesday, Russia imposed a $17,115 punishment on the American video conferencing service Zoom for failing to localise its users’ data.

In the previous month, Russia fined vacation rental company Airbnb, video streaming service Twitch and social media platform Pinterest for failing to localize user data, ordering them to pay 2 million rubles each.

Russia’s controversial data localization laws, passed in 2014, require the personal data of Russian users to be stored on domestic servers.

The largest social network to be blocked by Russian authorities for violating the localization law is U.S. professional networking site LinkedIn, which Roskomnadzor blocked in 2016.

The authorities of Russia have listed roughly 600 different tech companies currently complying with the law.