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Wikimedia Foundation Transparency Report/December 2016/Requests for User Data

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Privacy-related WMF Policies


Freedom of speech is essential to the Wikimedia movement—our projects cannot flourish in an ecosystem where individuals cannot speak freely. Our users trust us to protect their identities against unlawful disclosure and we take this responsibility seriously.

However, every year, governments, individuals, and corporations ask us to disclose user data. Often, we have no nonpublic information to disclose because we collect little nonpublic information about users and retain that information for a short period of time. But when we do have data, we carefully evaluate every request before considering disclosure. If the requests do not meet our standards — if they are overly broad, unclear, or irrelevant — we will push back on behalf of our users.

If we must produce information due to a legally valid request, we will notify the affected user before we disclose, if we are legally permitted and have the means to do so. In certain cases, we may help find assistance for users to fight an invalid request.

The question of the right to privacy must be one of the defining issues of our time.'

— Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International, (2014)
JUL – DEC 2016

Total user data requests

13   

JUL – DEC 2016

Percentage of times information produced

8%

Data

JUL – DEC 2016

Summary

Total number of requests

13

Informal Non-Government Requests

6

Informal Government Requests

5

Civil Subpoenas

1

Criminal Subpoenas

1

Administrative Subpoenas

0

Search Warrants

0

Court Orders

0

National Security Requests

0

Information Produced

1

User Accounts Potentially Affected

12,258

User Accounts Actually Affected

1

User Accounts Notified

0

Type of Information Requested

We divide the requests we receive by the type of information requested: “content” or “non-content.”

Most content information on the Wikimedia projects is the public content of articles and project pages; “non-content” information refers to information such as IP addresses or user agent information. The distinction comes from the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or ECPA. Please see our FAQ for more information.

JUL – DEC 2016

Content requests

0%   

JUL – DEC 2016

Non-content requests

100%   
JUL – DEC 2016
Compared to other companies, we received relatively few requests[1]
Company Requests received Requests granted
Facebook 59,229 41,424
Google 44,943 28,763
Twitter 5,676 3,916
LinkedIn 145 89
Wikimedia 13 0
  1. Due to the inconsistent release dates across different organizations, comparison data for the period covered by this report (January - June 2016) was not available, so we are presenting the comparison data above for July 2015 - December 2015. Please also note that figures for Wikimedia include additional types of requests for user data that are not included in the other organizations' figures. See the FAQ for more details.

JUL – DEC 2016

Requests for user data, and how we responded

By request type:

Received All Partial

Informal non-government requests

6 0 0

Informal government requests

5 0 0

Civil subpoenas

1 0 0

Court orders

0 0 0

Criminal subpoenas

1 0 1

Administrative subpoenas

0 0 0

Search warrants

0 0 0

By country:

Flag of United Kingdom United Kingdom 3 0 0
Flag of United States United States 3 0 1
Flag of Korea Korea 2 0 0
Flag of Australia Australia 1 0 0
Flag of Croatia Croatia 1 0 0
Flag of France France 1 0 0
Flag of India India 1 0 0
Unknown 1 0 0

JUL – DEC 2016

Government requests breakdown

Informal Government Requests

Total

6

United Kingdom

Local Police

2

Australia

State Police

1

India

State Police

1

Korea

Local Police

1

United States

Federal law enforcement

1

Preservation Requests

Occasionally, we receive a preservation request from the U.S. government under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act . A preservation request is an order to retain information that would otherwise be deleted, anonymized, or aggregated within 90 days, according to our Data Retention Guidelines. If we receive one of these requests, we are legally required to retain the specific information indicated. However, we will not turn this information over to the requesting party unless they subsequently follow our Requests for User Information Procedures & Guidelines, and obtain a legal order, such as a subpoena or warrant, for the information in question.

Here, we provide the number of new preservation requests we received during the period covered by this report.

JUL - DEC 2016
Total Preservation Requests 1