Policies/Regulation

Facebook’s Transparency Report for the first half (H1) of 2018 reveals a steep rise in data requests by the Indian government, as compared to the number in the previous two years. Facebook received 16,580 data requests from the government in H1 of 2018, as compared to 12,171 data requests in H2 2017 and 9,853 data requests in H1 of 2017. During this period, 23,047 user account information was also requested.

Facebook provided data to the government in 53% of the cases – this includes information about requests related to various products and services under Facebook such as Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Oculus and WhatsApp. The following table shows a rise in the data requests made by the government over the years.