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
Australia 6 104 100%
Brunei 1 1 100%
Canada 11 12 73%
France 26 32 88%
Germany 37 63 70%
India 5 9 0%
Japan 4 5 100%
Korea 131 432 91%
Norway 1 3 100%
Pakistan 6 32 0%
Russia 20 20 55%
Spain 1 1 0%
United Kingdom 8 51 88%
United States 10 11 90%
Global Total 267 776

Illustrative examples

Russia - We received a request from a Russian government authority to remove a specific Yahoo Answers page on the basis that the page contained information on the manufacture, supply, sale, and consumption of drugs and psychotropic substances. After reviewing the content, we removed the page because it violated Yahoo’s Community Guidelines.

France - We received a request from a French law enforcement authority to remove a specific Yahoo Answers page on the basis that the page contained content which violated French law against provoking discrimination on the grounds of origin, ethnicity nation, race, or religion. After reviewing the content, we removed the page because it violated Yahoo’s Community Guidelines.

Canada - We received a request from a Canadian law enforcement authority to take action against a Tumblr blog for engaging in harassing behavior. After reviewing the content of the blog, we terminated the blog for violating Tumblr’s Community Guidelines.

Russia - We received a request from a Russian government authority to remove a specific Tumblr blog post because the content contained information prohibited from public distribution in the Russian Federation. We reviewed the content, which depicted an individual using a bong. We did not remove the image because the content did not violate Tumblr’s Community Guidelines.

Singapore - We received a request from a law enforcement authority in Singapore to remove a specific Tumblr blog post because the post contained an image of an individual which had been posted without consent and offensive comments had been made with respect to the image. After reviewing the content of the post, we removed the content for violating Tumblr’s Community Guidelines.

Download Data for this Reporting Period: XLS