User Confidentiality

User confidentiality has always been a given on the internet. People can use an alias or no identity at all to have access to web services. It’s a common practice online and it works on Yandex just as well. We believe that each user has the right to keep their identity confidential.
To register on Yandex, web users agree to provide accurate, complete information. Yandex never discloses this information to third parties (except when required by law and only in accordance with the terms and conditions of Privacy Policy) or checks its accuracy, trusting that it has been provided with full honesty and cooperation. Yandex users who are operating a vehicle through our transportation service Yandex.Drive must submit a driver’s license and otherwise, Yandex services do not require users to submit identification for registration, although we maintain the right to request information to verify a users' identity for legal reasons.
Users enjoying anonymity on Yandex, however, are still required to comply with the law, as well as with the terms and conditions of Yandex’s User Agreement. We check every policy violation allegation and may block access to or even delete the reported content if the violation is confirmed.
In some cases, the right to determine whether a violation has taken place is granted by law only to the interested parties or to the authorized governmental agencies or to the court. In such cases, Yandex is not authorized to evaluate the legitimacy of the reported content. What Yandex does have the authority to do, however, is apply its principle of “restricted right to confidentiality” to both parties to help them resolve the issue. The violation reporter and the publisher of the reported content are offered to waive their right to confidentiality and resolve the issue either on their own or using the mediation of an authorized governmental agency or in court.
This is what happens in practice:
After receiving a violation report, we ask the reporter to send us a substantiated statement detailing their allegations, together with the exact address of the reported content on Yandex and the information sufficient to identify the reporter. After receiving this statement, we block access to the reported content. If the content’s publisher provided their contact information at registration, we also notify them that the access to their content has been blocked because of the violation report we received.
The user whose content has been blocked can either delete it or, if they believe that publishing this content on Yandex does not violate anything, notify Yandex that they wish to settle all issues related to this content. The reported content will be automatically deleted, if the publisher fails to notify Yandex about their intentions to cooperate.
Both the content’s publisher and the reporter should provide their identity and contact information to Yandex. After we receive a notification from the publisher confirming their intention to cooperate, we unblock the content and provide both parties with their contact information so that they could discuss the issue with each other. Yandex removes the reported content from its websites only after receiving the evidence that the violation has been confirmed.
This procedure allows each of the interested parties to take every opportunity to exercise their rights and freedoms stipulated by law.