VKontakte has created a section on working with government agencies

The social network "VKontakte" presented a special section on working with personal data of users and the procedure for interacting with government agencies.

Details

• A special page presents the principles of information protection, the procedure for managing data and the process of processing requests within the framework of the laws “On the Police”, “On the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation” and “On Investigative Activities”.
• It follows from the information provided that VKontakte collects data such as location, registration data (first name, last name, date of birth, gender, mobile phone number, email address), support requests, data from the profile description (marital status, place of residence, work, education, and so on), browsing history and devices, messages, media files on which the user is tagged, payment information, publication and subscription history.
• According to the law, Roskomnadzor, the FAS, courts and law enforcement agencies, including the Investigative Committee, the FSB and the police, can apply to VKontakte. The administration of the social network emphasizes that in Russia it is forbidden to notify users of incoming requests from government agencies. In addition, VKontakte faces criminal liability and fines for refusing to cooperate with them.
• The company notes that it checks all requests from government agencies for compliance with the law and does not issue personal messages of users without a court order.
• At the same time, the section does not contain information on the number of requests from government officials on VKontakte, as foreign companies Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft do when publishing their Transparency Reports. They contain information about the number and quality of government requests - to remove content, restrict it on the territory of the state, or give out information about users.
• The VKontakte section for working with user data appeared after a series of scandals about initiating criminal cases for extremism due to posts and reposts on social network pages.

Maria Latsinskaya