Google recently released its transparency report on government requests for user data around the world for the second half of 2015. The report sees a significant increase of requests, making it the highest figure the internet giant has ever received.
In the report, Google received 40,677 user data requests from 1 July to 31 December 2015. That’s an increase from 35,365 requests on the six months before that, and 30,140 requests for the same period in 2014. As for user account requests, the company received a whopping 81.311 requests from government all around the world, an increase from 68.908 on the first half of 2015.
Fortunately though, an increase of request from governments doesn’t mean that Google will divulge more information. Google provided some data to 64% of those requests, an increase of only 1% compared to the first half of 2015.
This number has been declining since Google started publishing its government data request reports. In 2010, Google provided information to 76%, but has dropped down to about 64% since 2012.
United States received the most requests from its government, with 12,523 requests; the company granted 79% of those requests. Germany is second with 7.491 requests, followed by France with 4,174. As for Malaysia, our government requested for 5 user data for 7 accounts but none of them were disclosed.
For comparison, Apple received 5 user data requests from Malaysia for the second half of 2015 and gave information for all five requests. Facebook received 13 requests for 18 users, and granted 76.92% of requests granted.
Check out Google for more information about its transparency report.
