Published on Sep 09, 2013
2:30 PM
Following the footsteps of tech giants Google and Facebook, Yahoo
has published its first report detailing the requests it gets from
Governments to reveal user information. The Singapore Government
made requests on 189 individual accounts in the first six months of
this year, said Yahoo in a report published over the weekend. Yahoo
added that Government data requests were generally made in
connection with criminal investigations.
The company complied with 59 per cent of these requests. It also
revealed that of all the Government requests received, it disclosed
"non-content data" in 73 or 53 per cent of the requests. Such data
consists of items such as information captured at the time of
registration and includes name, location, and IP address, login
details and billing information. Other transactional information
such as who e-mails are being sent to and received from are also
included.
In two instances, Yahoo released detailed data to the Singapore
government. This includes text within e-mails and Messenger
services, images on its photo sharing site, Flickr, and even Yahoo
Calendar event details.
Out of the 17 countries listed by Yahoo, the highest number of
requests came from the US government, which demanded that the firm
handed over data on over 40,000 users. The British government
sought data on 2,832 accounts, while Australian authorities
requested data on some 800 accounts.
ST
