India made 321 user data requests from Microsoft in the first half of 2013

India made 321 user data requests from Microsoft in the first half of 2013

Microsoft has unveiled its Law Enforcement Requests Report for the first half of 2013 where it details the number of requests for data it received from law enforcement agencies from around the world. According to Microsoft, India made 321 requests for user data reports for its services including Skype. The total number of accounts and users specified within this request by Indian agencies stood at 515. Microsoft revealed that it had complied with about 80 percent of requests made by the country’s agencies, giving up only subscriber/transactional data. The company rejected 3.2 percent of requests made by India. The report also stated that India had made about 470 user data requests back in the calendar year of 2012.

India made 321 requests for the first half of 2013

As far as Skype goes, India made 43 user data requests from Microsoft. For the VoIP service that allows you to make video calls over the Internet, India made requests from Microsoft affecting 102 accounts, out of which the company provided only subscriber/transactional data for 79.1 percent of requests, rejecting 18.6 percent of them. No data was found for 2.3 percent of requests related to Skype. In all, Microsoft received 37,196 requests from governments around the world in association with 66,539 user accounts. Approximately 77 percent of these requests resulted in Microsoft disclosing “non-content data”. The company says that it did not disclose any data at all for nearly 21 percent of requests.Unsurprisingly, a huge chunk of these requests – 7,014 in all – came from the US governments. The requests were made by the country’s federal, state and local governments and affected about 18,809 accounts in all. Microsoft says that only a small number of requests resulted in the disclosure of customer content data – just 2.19 percent of total requests. More importantly, 92 percent of the requests that resulted in the disclosure of customer content were from United States law enforcement agencies.“While we see requests from a large number of countries, when you look at the overall number, the requests are fairly concentrated with over 73percent of requests coming from five countries, the United States, Turkey, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France,” the report read. “For Skype the requests were similarly concentrated, with four countries, the US, UK, France and Germany, accounting for over 70 percent of requests.”Heavyweight companies like Microsoft, Google and Facebook are now trying to make transparency reports like these more commonplace to make the community aware of what is going on behind the scenes with law enforcement agencies. Of course, these reports exclude data that are concerned with national security, choosing to reveal law enforcement based data, but this goes a long way for building trust with users.

ReadMore:Android Games