eBay has become the first US company to say it will comply with the new Russian legislation requiring businesses to store Russian users’ personal data in Russia, business daily Kommersant reported earlier this week.
Vladimir Dolgov, eBay’s general manager in Russia, met with a deputy head of telecom regulator Roskomnadzor last week to clarify “a series of questions” related to the law.
“eBay is working on transferring data from Switzerland to Russia. The law goes into force on Sept. 1, but the company will finish this work earlier,” said a source cited by Kommersant.
A representative from eBay subsidiary PayPal also participated in the meeting and “expressed the same position as eBay,” Kommersant’s source said.
The company did elaborate on the volume of data to be transferred and on how said transfer and further operations will be conducted. eBay had 3.7 million customers in Russia as of the second half of last year, the report said.
Adopted last year, the new legislation on personal data storage poses new challenges for many foreign and domestic players that store their users’ data in borderless clouds – with considerable differences depending on the sector and type of business.
Unlike eBay, “many companies won’t meet the September date,” said David Hamner, Chairman of data center company DataSpace.
“However many believe that if they can demonstrate activities to become compliant they may be granted some extensions or be subject to some manageable level of financial penalty,” he added in an exchange with East-West Digital News.
A report released recently by EWDN sheds full light on the legal and organizational aspects of the matter. This free document includes expert contributions from EY and J’son & Partners, data-center operators IXcellerate and DataSpace, and international payment company PayU.
- To downlaod a copy of EWDN’s report on personal data storage in Russia, please click here.
