Government Removal Requests

Like other technology and communications companies, Yahoo receives requests from governments around the world to either remove or otherwise modify content from our services based on allegations that it violates local laws, or to review content to determine if it should be removed for inconsistency with a product’s Community Guidelines or our Terms of Service. Whatever the allegation or assertion, we carefully review each request and respond in accordance with our Global Principles for Responding to Government Requests.

Government removal requests by country

For each country listed below, we report the number of Government Removal Requests received during the specified reporting period, the number of items specified in the requests, and the percentage of requests in response to which some content was removed. While we endeavor to make this data as complete as possible, we only include in our numbers requests that we identify as being from a government agency. If a government agency used a Report Abuse link, for example, we wouldn’t be able to identify the party making the request to remove content and would not include that request in our statistics. We continue to work to track these requests.

Country Total requests Total items specified Compliance rate
Brazil 2 33 100%
France 6 6 100%
Germany 1 17 0%
India 3 7 86%
Spain 21 24 79%
Global Total 33 87

Illustrative examples

BRAZIL - We received a court order from Brazilian authorities to remove 8 URLs redirecting to websites displaying explicit deepfake videos in which the face of the victim was superimposed onto another person’s body in a sexually explicit context. We submitted the 8 URLs to Bing, which provides Yahoo search results, for de-indexing.

SPAIN - We received an order from Spanish authorities to remove 1 URL redirecting to several links for the illegal download of literary works protected by copyright. After reviewing the request, the URL was submitted to Bing for de-indexing.

INDIA - We received a request from the government agency in charge of monitoring e-advertisement related to prenatal determination of gender and gender selection. The Agency requested us to remove two keywords from Yahoo search engine, as such keywords redirected to content in violation of the Indian Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act. After reviewing the request, the two keywords were submitted to Bing for
blocking.

Download Data for this Reporting Period: XLS