After the sanctions, Google worked with an ad buying company owned by Sber and allowed it to collect user data

Google continued to work with the Sber-owned advertising agency after the imposition of sanctions against the bank and allowed the company to collect user data. This was reported by the non-profit journalistic organization ProPublica .

According to ProPublica , Google, , owned by Sber at least until June 23, continued to cooperate with the Russian data processing company RuTarget , on the basis of which they created the digital advertising purchasing company Segmento . Segmento collects and stores data about people browsing websites and apps. Among them are those who were in Ukraine.

project The Adalytics identified about 700 cases after February 24 when RuTarget received user data from Google , despite the company’s inclusion in the US pre-sanction list. The exchange of information only stopped on June 23, after ProPublica's request to Google .

Among the user data that Google transferred to RuTarget could be unique mobile phone identifiers, IP addresses, location information and data on user Internet activity. According to experts, this information could be used by Russian intelligence agencies to track people “of interest.”

spokesman Google Michael Aciman assured that the corporation blocked RuTarget from using its advertising products in March, and since then the Russian company has not purchased advertising directly through Google . Aciman confirmed that RuTarget was still receiving from Google user and ad buying data until ProPublica and Adalytics reported it.

“We have reviewed the organizations in question and have taken appropriate enforcement action beyond the measures we took earlier this year to block them from directly using Google advertising products ,” Aciman assured.

Aciman said the action includes not only preventing RuTarget from further accessing user data, but also banning advertising purchases through third parties in Russia that cannot be sanctioned. He declined to say whether RuTarget systems bought advertising through Google's using such third parties, and did not comment on whether data about Ukrainians was transferred to RuTarget .