Fastmail

History

2021: Curtailment of work in Russia

On June 8, 2021, it became known that the Fastmail postal service was leaving Russia after the requirements of Roskomnadzor to comply with the law on the storage of user data in the country.

On June 8, 2021, Fastmail closed the possibility of registering new mailboxes for Russians, and also removed the application from the Russian segments of the App Store and Google Play. 

Fastmail postal service leaves Russia after the requirements of Roskomnadzor

Roskomnadzor, threatening Fastmail with blocking, demanded to place a server with the personal data of Russians inside the country. The company turned to lawyers in an attempt to challenge this requirement. The main argument of the service was that it does not have a representative office in Russia, as well as a significant customer base, all calculations are made in foreign currency, and there is no advertising aimed at the Russian audience. However, Fastmail lost the court, and the appeal in May 2021 was rejected.

In June 2021, Fastmail announced that the service could no longer fulfill the requirements of the Russian authorities, as this would create additional jurisdictional risks and unacceptable privacy risks, and would also be a costly process.

We needed to find and place servers (main and backup) in the Russian data center, make technical changes so that only data from Russian customers were located there. It was necessary to spend on the creation of a subsidiary in Russia. Subjecting any of our customers to Russian data access laws could create unacceptable privacy risks. Given the minimum number of customers in Russia, we came to the conclusion that we will not be able to fulfill the requirements from a technical, business or financial point of view, the company said in a statement.

By June 8, 2021, it is unclear what will happen to the owners of the current Fastmail postal addresses. The company said that all users affected by the current situation should contact Roskomsvoboda^[1]

Notes