Government Requests for Facebook User Data Surge

  12 November 2015    Read: 705
Government Requests for Facebook User Data Surge
Facebook saw an 18 percent increase in the number of government requests for data from the social network
The number of requests went up from 35,051 to 41,214, increasing across all countries where Facebook provides service, according to a new report conducted by the company.

"Overall, we continue to see an increase in content restrictions and government requests for data globally," Facebook said in a Wednesday statement.

The company complied with about 80 percent of all requests for data received, according to its report.

Facebook stressed that "each and every request we receive is checked for legal sufficiency and we reject or require greater specificity on requests that are overly broad or vague."

The company did not elaborate on what is considered too broad, only providing details on whether the information requested from Facebook was content-related or not (such as subscriber name).

According to Facebook, there has also been a major increase in content restriction.

"The amount of content restricted for violating local law increased by 112% over the second half of 2014, to 20,568 pieces of content, up from 9,707," Facebook said.

The company stressed that it does not grant direct access to people’s data, striving to protect people’s security while respecting their rights and freedoms.

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