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
Belgium 2 358 11%
Brazil 10 22 100%
India 4 40 100%
Italy 2 7 71%
Global Total 18 427

Illustrative examples

Belgium - We received a request from Belgian authorities to remove from our search results 179 URLs redirecting to websites containing non-consensual distribution of private content. After reviewing the request, we determined that only 38 of the reported results could be found on Yahoo Search. We submitted the 38 URLs to Bing, which provides Yahoo search results, for de-indexing. 

Brazil - We received a request from a Brazilian law enforcement agency attaching a court order instructing Yahoo to de-index an URL on the basis that the relevant website made available, without authorization and subject to payment, literary works protected by copyright. After reviewing the request, the URL was submitted to Bing for de-indexing.


Italy - We received a court order from Italian authorities to remove from our search results 5 URLs redirecting to websites that sold illegal drugs online.After reviewing the request, we submitted 4 of the 5 URLs to Bing for de-indexing. Indeed, one of the URLs was no longer appearing in Yahoo Search results, so no further action was taken in relation to that URL.

 

 

Download Data for this Reporting Period: XLS