Microsoft shares details of content removal requests

MUMBAI, INDIA: Microsoft has revealed for the first time how many requests it has had from members of the public wanting online content about them to be removed.

During H12015, Microsoft received the most—759 requests from German citizens with the second-highest number of 559 coming from the UK, according to a report in BBC.

Among the governments, the number of the highest content removal requests came from China at 165. Infrequent requests from other governments included 11 from the US, five from Germany, two each from the UK and Russia and one from Austria.

Six seven percent of all government requests resulted in the disclosure of subscriber or transactional data with 12 percent of requests rejected. In 16 percent of cases no data was found.

The software major also received many requests for data from law enforcement agencies.

It received a total of 35,228 for customer information in the first H12015, which is a slight increase compared to the number of requests for the H22014.

The US made the most requests at 254, while the UK was second with 183.

BBC reported that from the data sought, three percent of law enforcement requests resulted in the disclosure of user content and all of that was done in response to a court order or warrant, Microsoft revealed.

These requests were made under the EU Right to be Forgotten ruling, the BBC noted.

Overall, Microsoft received 3,546 requests for the removal of content from individuals and complied with half of them, BBC reported.

The majority of requests were for the removal of links to search results on Bing, although the firm also received requests for the removal of content from other Microsoft services, including OneDrive, Bing Ads and MSN.

Such requests were made possible by a controversial ruling from the European Court of Justice in May 2014, BBC reported.

"This new report illustrates how Microsoft strives to comply with local and intellectual property laws while adhering to our commitment to transparency and free expression," Microsoft said in a blog post.

At the time, search engines worried that the ruling would mean they would be inundated with requests while internet rights campaigners raised concerns that the ruling amounted to censorship.

All major search engines now produce regular transparency reports, partly in reaction to the revelations about government snooping from ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, said the BBC report.