Dutch regulator fines taxi app Yango $117 million for data transfer to Russia

The Dutch data protection agency said on ​Friday it had imposed a 100 ​million euro ($117 million) fine on mobile ‌taxi ​app Yango for transferring the personal data of its customers to Russia. AP, as the regulator is known, imposed the fine ‌on MLU, a company incorporated in the Netherlands which is behind the units of Yango in Norway and Finland, it said in a statement.

The Dutch data protection agency said on ​Friday it had imposed a 100 ​million euro ($117 million) fine on mobile ‌taxi ​app Yango for transferring the personal data of its customers to Russia. AP, as the regulator is known, imposed the fine ‌on MLU, a company incorporated in the Netherlands which is behind the units of Yango in Norway and Finland, it said in a statement. The taxi app operates mainly in Africa, Asia, ‌Latin America, the Middle East and non-EU European countries, but was also present in Finland ‌and in Norway, a country which does not belong to the EU but abides by the same rules on data protection.

The company said it will appeal the fine. "MLU engaged with the AP transparently and in ⁠good ​faith throughout the process, and ⁠is disappointed that the final decision does not, in its view, fully reflect the facts or the applicable ⁠law," it said in a statement, adding the app had not operated in the two Nordic countries ​since 2025. An investigation opened by the Dutch agency in late 2023 together with Finnish ⁠and Norwegian counterparts found that the taxi app collected and stored a significant amount of personal data of both ⁠customers ​and drivers, such as scans of driving licenses, home addresses or account numbers, on servers in Russia, the statement said. Companies operating in Europe are not allowed to transfer personal ⁠data to places where the data is "not equally well protected", the agency said.

"In Russia, personal ⁠data is not ⁠as well protected as in Europe. This may allow the Russian government to gain access to this data," the Dutch regulator's chief Aleid ‌Wolfsen said ‌in the statement. ($1 = 0.8516 euros)