Dutch authorities fine Yango taxi app for sharing sensitive user data with Russia

The Dutch Data Protection Authority has issued a €100 million ($118 million) fine against ride-hailing service Yango for unlawfully transferring customers' personal data to Russia.

The joint investigation by Dutch, Norwegian, and Finnish regulators revealed that the Yango taxi app shares personal data of customers and drivers with companies in Russia, according to the Tweakers report, which Cybernews machine-translated.

Yango is considered the international arm of Russian technology giant Yandex, also known as “Russian Google.”

The investigation found that the Yango app stored scans of driver’s licenses, addresses, contact details, locations, bank account numbers, photos, chat conversations, and social security numbers.

Yango’s parent company MLU is based in the Netherlands, but Finland and Norway are the only European countries where the ride-hailing service is available.

The authorities ordered Yango to stop passing users’ data to Russia and to pay a €100 million fine, a ruling the company can appeal.

Norwegian and Finnish regulators took steps against Yango in 2023 after the Russian secret service reportedly ordered the ride-hailing service to start sharing users’ personal data. Yango then said the order only applies to Russian citizens.

The ruling comes amid heightened tensions between European countries and Russia after it launched an invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Both Norway and Finland share a border with Russia and have accused Moscow of employing hybrid warfare against them.

MLU, however, disagrees with the decision and plans to challenge it through the appropriate legal channels.

In a written statement shared with Cybernews, the company says the EU riders’ and drivers’ personal data was stored exclusively within the EU in pseudonymized and encrypted form, which it claims makes the data technically inaccessible to any third party.

“All appropriate safeguards were implemented in full compliance with the GDPR. The premise of the decision does not reflect how the ride-hailing app actually worked. It is also worth noting that the app has not operated in Norway and Finland since 2025,” the statement reads.

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