Yahoo reveals data requests from S'pore Govt

Yahoo reveals data requests from S'pore Govt

SINGAPORE - Yet another global transparency report has been released, this time by American Internet corporation Yahoo. It was put up on the company's website on Friday, said Yahoo Singapore.

According to the report, Yahoo Singapore received 138 requests for user data across 189 specified accounts from the Singapore Government from January to end-June this year.

Yahoo, which is headquartered in California, was required to disclose non-content data - basic subscriber information such as name and Internet Protocol address - for 53 per cent of the requests. It disclosed content - data that users create, communicate and store on Yahoo's services - to only 1 per cent of the requests.

The transparency report, which included national-security requests, was Yahoo's first.

Similar reports have been published by other media giants, such as Facebook, which last month released figures on data requests it received from over 70 governments. Twitter and Google have done so, too.

The Yahoo report said the United States had the most number of data requests at 12,444, involving 40,322 accounts. Non-content data was disclosed for 55 per cent of the requests while content was disclosed for 37 per cent of them.

Yahoo said in the report that it takes user privacy "very seriously", and fights requests that are "unclear, improper, overly broad or unlawful".


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