Increasing Rate of Requests for User Data Received by Apple in the Last 6 Months
Apple’s semi-annual transparency report has been published. If you want to have a look at it, you can find it on Apple’s website. The report discusses information regarding personal data requests that Apple got from governments around the world. If you want to access the report for a specific nation, you can use the slider at the bottom of the page to easily choose the country you want. On the other hand, if you want to access the information the old way, you can download the PDF of the report.
According to the report of the first half of the current year, governments made 32,342 user data requests to Apple, which is 9 percent more than the past period. The largest number of requests – that is, 42 percent of the total requests – was made by Germany. Most of these requests were made for the purpose of investigating stolen devices. About 13,704 requests were issued for data on 26,160 devices.
After Germany, US topped this list, making 4,570 requests for 14,911 devices. According to Apple, most of these requests (2,397) were to access users’ basic account information. The US additionally requested 918 money-related identifiers, which cover fraudulent gift card, debit or credit transaction.
Furthermore, Apple got 4,177 worldwide requests, which is 25 percent more than the past period, for 40,641 gadgets. Apple clarifies that iCloud information from Apple IDs are also included in these requests. Thus, they include the name and address of the user, photographs, emails, iOS device backups, calendars and contacts. According to Apple, China padded this number by making almost 19,908 data requests mainly because of fraud investigation.
Apple additionally changed the manner in which it processes US national security requests. When it first started announcing data request reports in 2014, it did not include FBI-issued National Security Letters and requests in these reports. In the first six months of 2018, Apple said it got 0 to 499 National Security Letter requests for 1,000 to 1,499 records.