AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Yango, the ride-hailing app owned by Russian tech group Yandex NV, said on Thursday it is in talks with the Dutch Data Protection Agency to demonstrate that it adheres to European rules on data transfer and storage.
Finnish and Norwegian regulators in August announced plans to ban Yango from transferring data to Russia over fears it could end up in the hands of security services, but later reversed that decision.
The Dutch Data Protection Agency on Thursday confirmed it is also investigating Yango. Yandex, sometimes dubbed “Russia’s Google”, is Nasdaq-listed but registered in the Netherlands.
A spokesperson for the DPA said it could not disclose “the contents of this investigation or the timeline.”
Yango said the Finnish and Norwegian probes showed “Yango’s personal data processing does not pose any imminent threat to the fundamental rights and freedoms” of European users.
“As we have always stated, data of Yango users cannot be obtained from the service by Russian authorities outside of the established international procedures, for example, involving Interpol.”
Yandex is in the process of trying to separate its core Russian businesses from the international operations registered in the Netherlands.
(Reporting by Toby Sterling. Editing by Jane Merriman)
