MOSCOW, November 17 (RAPSI) - Russia’s communications regulator Roskomnadzor added LinkedIn which boasts to be the world's largest business network on the blacklist and notified internet providers about blocking, RAPSI learnt from the regulator on Thursday.

In August, Moscow’s Tagansky District Court granted a motion filed by Roskomnadzor seeking to block access to LinkedIn in Russia. The Moscow City Court upheld the ruling on November 10.

Roskomnadzor claimed that the social network violated the law on personal data storage.

LinkedIn said that Roskomnadzor had lodged the claim unreasonably. If personal data owners consider that their rights have been violated, they are to turn to court and apply to Roskomnadzor. In this case, the regulator has turned to court advocating for indefinite range of persons, the company’s representative said in court.

The federal law requiring that data operators must store personal data of Russian citizens on servers located within the territory of the Russian Federation became effective on September 1, 2015. The law affects all businesses operating in Russia to the extent that they “collect, record, systematize, accumulate, store, correct (update, change), extract personal data on citizens of the Russian Federation,” and those dealing with clients from Russia. Compliance monitoring is vested with Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor), which would ask a Russian court to block access to sites operating in violation of the law.

LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network with more than 450 million members in over 200 countries and territories, according to its website.