The Indian government was in the second position after the US in requesting social media giant, Facebook, for access to users’ data in the first half of this year. During this period the queries rose by nearly 37 per cent from the second half (July-December period) last year.
As many as 22,684 queries were sent by the Indian government to Facebook about the users during first six months of 2019. As per Facebook’s Transparency report, Facebook only provided 54 per cent of the requests received.
The US government, which topped the ranks, had sent total 50,741 requests to Facebook about users’ data in the same period.
“Of the total volume, the US continues to submit the largest number of requests, followed by India, the UK, Germany and France,” said Chris Sonderby, VP & Deputy General Counsel, said in a statement on Thursday.
Globally, in the first half of 2019, government requests for user data increased by 16 per cent from 110,634 to 128,617.
(With input from agencies)