Google??s latest Transparency report shows government data r
Source: Jonathan Clifford
On Monday, September 14, Google updated its twice-yearly 'Transparency Report,' revealing that worldwide government requests for user data have increased a whopping 150 percent over the last five years.
According to the report, requests for user data from governments across the world witnessed an increase of 15 percent in the first six months of 2014; with the figures having seen a substantial 150 percent increase ever since the company first started publishing its Transparency Report in 2009.
Calling for reforms to allow greater disclosure of governments' user-data requests, Google has revealed in its latest Transparency Report that the user information which is mainly sought by governments includes registration details, email address, and IP addresses, among others.
Divulging the details about the user-data requests received by the company, Google said that, in the last six months of 2013, it received 31,698 government data requests, which affected a total of nearly 48,000 accounts. Google said that it had complied with the requests, and provided some data, in 65 percent of the cases.
Google further disclosed in its Transparency Report that the maximum number of user-data requests - 12,539 in all - were received from the US; followed by Germany and France, with 3,338 and 3,002 user-data requests respectively.
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