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
France 1 1 100%
India 2 1 0%
Italy 2 4 100%
Pakistan 1 1 0%
Global Total 6 7

Illustrative examples

France - We received a request from a French law enforcement authority to remove a question and a picture posted on Yahoo Answers on the basis that the post contained a caricature of the victims of a violent attack and violated French law against dissemination of images of an offence of willful harm. After reviewing the contested content, we removed the content because it violated Yahoo’s Community Guidelines.

Italy - We received a request from an Italian law enforcement agency attaching an Italian court order instructing Yahoo to de-index three URLs on the basis that the subjects behind the relevant websites were fraudulently posing as representatives of an insurance company, wrongfully using the trademark of a legitimate insurance company, and selling fake insurance policies. After reviewing the request, the URLs were submitted to Bing, which provides Yahoo search results, for de-indexing.

India - We received an order from an Indian government agency, following the directives of an Indian court requesting that all defamatory and abusive content posted on social media platforms regarding said court and its judges be removed. We asserted a defense that the order was not applicable to our services as it was directed towards social media platforms and asserted that Yahoo India should be excused from being one of the respondents to this order.

Download Data for this Reporting Period: XLS