Microsoft admits revealing subscriber data to govt

March 22, 2013 05:18 pm | Updated November 17, 2021 04:55 am IST - Chennai

A 2010 file photo of a hotmail page. Hotmail is one of the Microsoft  services for which surbscriber/transaction data has been shared with the Indian government.

A 2010 file photo of a hotmail page. Hotmail is one of the Microsoft services for which surbscriber/transaction data has been shared with the Indian government.

Microsoft revealed on Friday that it had received over 400 requests for disclosure of nearly 600 users and accounts from the Indian government in 2012. Out of these requests, Microsoft complied with as many as 370 (or 88.5%) requests that resulted in a disclosure of subscriber/transactional data. However, the company said it did not comply with any request that would have resulted in disclosure of exact content.

This is the first time Microsoft is revealing such information, and plans on doing on it through a continuous basis through what it calls its ‘Law Enforcement Requests Report’.

“We believe we have a responsibility to respect human rights and the principles of free expression and privacy. As part of this, we are providing information on law enforcement requests we receive for customer data,” the company said on its website.

In the report, the company points out that the content that was disclosed could include the subject or body of an e-mail, photos stored in SkyDrive, address book information and calendars. Non-content information, which was mainly shared with the Indian Government, could include the user’s name, billing address and IP history among others.

With regard to requests for Skype user information, Microsoft received a total of 53 requests for disclosure of 101 accounts for the year 2012—however; none of these requests were complied with.

The report that mentions that all of its online services were included in this report such as Hotmail, Outlook.com, SkyDrive, Microsoft Account and Office 365.

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