Yahoo says US sought data on 40,332 user accounts in 2013

Yahoo said that it has received 12,444 requests for data from the US government so far this year that covers the accounts of 40,322 users overall. In its first government transparency report, Yahoo said it rejected just 2 percent of those federal government requests.

Yahoo released the report to share some data about what governments around the world have asked the firm to disclose about its users in the first half of 2013. As with other technology companies, Yahoo said that the report includes statistics for requests made through national security letters and those made under the Foreign Intelligence Service Act, in addition to other requests from law enforcement. The company also broke down how many of those requests yielded data — 37 percent disclosed the content of Yahoo accounts, such as words in e-mails, photos or uploaded files. In about 55 percent of the requests made, the company disclosed information about its users that did not involve content but gave information such as names, location data and e-mail addresses. In six percent of cases, the requests yielded no data because, for example, “the account didn’t exist or there was no data for the date range specified by the request,” Yahoo said. Yahoo and other technology firms are working to get permission to release the exact numbers of these types of requests.