Following the footsteps of Internet giants like Microsoft, Google, Twitter and Facebook, Yahoo has released its first transparency report.
Yahoo has published its first-ever transparency report, which reveals the number of requests made by the governments across the world for accessing users’ information. The report, covering first six months of 2013, shows Yahoo received a maximum 12,444 requests from the U.S. government. Germany followed with 4,295 requests. India is also in the list with 1,490 data requests.
Yahoo says it provided information including communications in Yahoo Mail or Messenger, photos on Flickr or Yahoo Address Book entries. The company also acknowledged sharing non-content related information, which includes a person’s name, location or Internet Protocol address. In case of India, Yahoo ceded 341 government data requests resulting in disclosure of some user data. You can check out Yahoo’s transparency report here.
“At Yahoo, we take user privacy seriously and appreciate our role as a global company in promoting freedom of expression wherever we do business. That’s why we’re issuing our first global transparency report, which details government data requests from January 1 through June 30. We include national security requests within the scope of our aggregate statistics,” says Yahoo in a statement.
The data, however, does not include requests for data on Tumblr, which the company took over recently. “Although Yahoo recently acquired Tumblr, this report reflects Yahoo’s data only. Tumblr will issue a separate transparency report at a later date, and will issue its own additional reports on an ongoing basis,” says Yahoo on its website.
Yahoo’s figures on India data requests
Yahoo’s latest report is part of the ongoing campaign by the Internet companies to promote transparency on the web. In the past, Microsoft, Google and Twitter have issued similar reports. Facebook recently released its first on requests made by the global governments to access users’ information.
Covering the first six months of 2013, ending June 30, Facebook’s ‘Global Governments Requests Report‘ reveals the U.S. had made the highest number of requests (over 11,000) information about users. India ranks second with 3,245 requests for information in the first six months.
The transparency report also comes in the wake of the recent revelations of data mining by the U.S. government. While the US government has faced criticism for its controversial PRISM programme, the Indian government is also drawing flak for its efforts to pre-screen the Internet content.
Global figures: Yahoo transparency report