Yahoo released a transparency report Thursday that reveals how frequently the Sunnyvale company responded to thousands of requests from governments around the world for Yahoo users emails, instant messages, Flickr photos, calendar entries, thoughts recorded on Yahoo Notepad and other data.
Such reports — this is Yahoo s fourth biannual report since 2013 — have become a common way for tech firms to show that they re keeping user privacy in mind amid revelations that government bodies such as the U.S. National Security Agency are increasingly seeking Internet data from Silicon Valley with or without a company s cooperation.
We evaluate each government request with a focus on minimizing disclosure of user data and we publish a transparency report to promote accountability and transparency, said a blog post Thursday from Ron Bell, Yahoo s general counsel.
United States: Of 4,865 data requests for data on more than 9,700 Yahoo users, Yahoo rejected 5 percent of the requests for which it had data, disclosed non-content data (name, location, IP address, etc.) for 59 percent of requests and content for 24 percent.
Yahoo also revealed about eight requests by governments asking Yahoo to remove some of its content. Yahoo said it denied requests by a Malaysian government agency to remove Yahoo News comments deemed to be religiously offensive, but it complied with a handful of requests from Brazil, India and the United States.
Here is how Yahoo described some of those removal requests:
India – We received a request from an Indian law enforcement agency to remove allegedly defamatory comments posted to a Yahoo Group. We rejected the request because it was not properly served and provided the Indian law enforcement agency with instructions for how to properly serve its request. We did not receive a properly addressed request as of the close of this reporting period.
Malaysia – We received a request from a Malaysian government agency to remove a user comment to a Yahoo News article because it allegedly contained religiously offensive statements. We rejected the request because it was not served properly and we provided the Malaysian government agency with instructions for how to submit a properly addressed request. By the time the Malaysian government agency provided proper service, the news article and all associated user comments had been removed for unrelated reasons.
United States – We received a court order from a U.S. government agency to remove content from specified domains. Yahoo did not host any of the domains or content so we did not comply with the order.
Above: A Yahoo gumball machine at the doorway of Yahoo s corporate headquarters in Sunnyvale in January. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group)
