Public access to LinkedIn's website has been blocked in Russia by the country's communications regulator on Thursday. The social media giant was found guilty of violating a data storage law.

With over six million registered users in Russia, LinkedIn was said to be the first major social network that has been blocked by Russian authorities. However, the decision was legal and the President Valdimir Putin did not plan to interfere in the case as per Reuters.

As per Russian law, the websites are required to store personal data of Russian citizens, LinkedIn had failed to do so on Russian servers said the communications regulator Roskomnadzor. The law came into action in September 2015 and it was approved by the president in 2014.

LinkedIn, on the other hand, has confirmed that its services are blocked in Russia. The order to do so was believed to be issued in a short statement on Roskomnadzor's site in Russian, as reported on Tech Crunch.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that there will be "no such concerns" when he was questioned if the move might store fears of online censorship. It is not certain if LinkedIn is hoping to negotiate an exception to the law or buy some more time.

As per reports, there are a large number of international websites accessible in Russia and it appears that not all the sites are hosting data within the country. LinkedIn was launched in China with a completely separate site and they hosted data within the country.

Russia's rule is simple, as they need a way to protect user's personal data, but this has also turned out to be controversial as some claim that Russia wants easy access to the data for surveillance purposes.

Other social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter seem to still keep their data housed out of Russia; LinkedIn had slowly started to hear that their website is no longer accessible in the country.