Emergency requests

In addition to Government Data Requests, Yahoo sometimes receives requests from governments seeking information in emergency situations (i.e., the disclosure of information is sought to save a life or prevent serious physical harm). The chart below represents the number of such requests that Yahoo received globally during the reporting period, the number of accounts specified in those requests, and the percentage of the requests that resulted in the disclosure of some information.

Preservation requests

Government agencies sometimes ask Yahoo to temporarily preserve account information pertaining to an investigation while they work to obtain valid legal process. When we receive a preservation request issued in accordance with applicable law, we will temporarily preserve the relevant user data, to the extent it is available. We will not disclose information until the government agency has presented us with valid legal process. The chart below shows the number of preservation requests we received within this reporting period, as well as the number of accounts specified in those requests. If information we preserved is subsequently sought by the government agency with legal process, the request (and our response) will be reflected as Government Data Request in the reporting period during which the request was made.

Government removal requests

Like other technology and communications companies, Yahoo receives requests from governments around the world to either remove or otherwise modify content from our services based on allegations that it violates local laws, or to review content to determine if it should be removed for inconsistency with a product’s Community Guidelines or our Terms of Service. Whatever the allegation or assertion, we carefully review each request and respond in accordance with our Global Principles for Responding to Government Requests.

The chart below shows the number of Government Removal Requests received during the specified reporting period, the number of items specified in the requests, and the percentage of requests in response to which some content was removed. While we endeavor to make this data as complete as possible, we only include in our numbers requests that we identify as being from a government agency. If a government agency used a Report Abuse link, for example, we wouldn’t be able to identify the party making the request to remove content and would not include that request in our statistics. We continue to work to track these requests.