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.

Government removal requests by country

For each country listed below, we report 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.

Country Total requests Total items specified Compliance rate
Brazil 1 1 0%
Georgia 1 1 100%
India 3 3 33%
Israel 1 1 0%
Italy 1 4 100%
Korea 53 71 77%
New Zealand 1 1 0%
Russia 8 594 25%
Slovak Republic 1 1 100%
Spain 1 1 0%
United Kingdom 1 1 100%
United States 5 5 100%
Global Total 77 684

Illustrative examples

India - We received a request from an Indian law enforcement authority to remove video content from Yahoo Search results on the basis that the video content had been uploaded without the consent of the owner. We did not remove the content because it was not hosted on our network.

United Kingdom - We received a request from a UK law enforcement authority to remove a Tumblr blog on the basis that it was created to impersonate. We reviewed the content and removed it after determining that it violated Tumblr’s Community Guidelines.

Russia - We received a request from a Russian government authority to remove an image from Flickr* on the basis that it depicted pornographic material. We did not remove the image because it did not violate Flickr’s Community Guidelines.

Russia - We received a request from a Russian government authority to remove an image from Flickr* on the basis that the material described methods for developing, manufacturing, and consuming drugs. After reviewing the content, we removed the image because it violated Flickr’s Community Guidelines.

*In April 2018, we announced that SmugMug agreed to acquire Flickr. Government requests received by Yahoo related to Flickr are reflected in this Transparency Report since Flickr was owned by Yahoo during this reporting period which covers the second half of 2017.

Download Data for this Reporting Period: XLS