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LinkedIn officially KickedOut of Russia

LinkedIn says it 'remains interested in a meeting' with Russian regulator

UPDATE Russian telecoms regulator Roskomnadzor has made it official: LinkedIn is no longer welcome in Putin's formerly-socialist paradise.

The regulator's brief statement confirms what we knew last week , namely that LinkedIn hasn't been able to satisfy Russia that it complies with laws requiring personal data to be stored on Russian soil.

LinkedIn argued that Russian authorities made their inquiries to the wrong office and that it was therefore unable to offer an explanation about its privacy arrangements.

LinkedIn is not big in Russia: the nation is home to about 143m souls but LinkedIn's About page says it has over six million members in the nation. That's poor compared to adoption rate compared to the likes of the United Kingdom (21m memnbers, 64m people) and Australian (8m members, 24m people).

Being blocked in Russia therefore deprives LinkedIn of an opportunity for significant growth.

The Register has asked LinkedIn for comment and will update this story if it responds. ®

UPDATE: A LinkedIn spokesperson has sent us the following statement.

“LinkedIn’s vision is to create economic opportunity for the entire global workforce. We are starting to hear from members in Russia that they can no longer access LinkedIn. Roskomnadzor's action to block LinkedIn denies access to the millions of members we have in Russia and the companies that use LinkedIn to grow their businesses. We remain interested in a meeting with Roskomnadzor to discuss their data localization request.”

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