Governments request for user data from Apple, Google rises; India ranks no. 1 in Southern Asia: Report
The Hindu
User data requests from Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft increased five times from 2013 to 2021, witnessing a 25% year-over-year increase in 2021
Government requests for user data from Big Tech companies like Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft increased more than five times from 2013 to 2021, with 2021 alone seeing a year-over-year increase of around 25%.
Companies also complied with an increasing number of requests with each year witnessing a 56k increase on average in disclosed requests. Apple complied with the government the most, submitting 82% of requests, followed by Meta at 71.7%, Google at 71%, and Microsoft at 68.2%.
Overall, companies complied with 127k requests in 2013 compared to 592k requests in 2021.
While the US and the EU authorities requested data the most, accounting for around 60% of all accounts of interest from 2013 to 2021. India ranked 36th on the list, a report from Surfshark, a cybersecurity and VPN provider, said.
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India ranked 36th in the world based on the online accounts requested over this time period accounting for user data requested for 58.7 accounts per 100k people. In comparison, China stood at the 65th spot with 6.7 account details being requested for 100k.
The U.S. requested more than double the accounts per 100K people than all the EU countries combined. And all 177 researched countries requested more than 6.6M accounts combined from 2013 to 2021.
In 2021, five women from Mayithara, four of them MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) workers, found a common ground in their desire to create a sustainable livelihood by growing vegetables. Rajamma M., Mary Varkey, Valsala L., Elisho S., and Praseeda Sumesh, aged between 70 and 39, pooled their savings, rented a piece of land and began their collective vegetable farming journey under the Deepam Krishi group.