The US government made 12,444 requests for data about 40,322 Yahoo users, the web firm has revealed in its first annual transparency report.
The report marks a more detailed account of what world governments have requested from Yahoo, following CEO Marissa Mayer's reveal that her company had been forced to comply with Prism requests by the US National Security Agency (NSA). The report details requests made from January 1 to June 30 this year.
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Following the Prism revelations leaked by Edward Snowden, it's perhaps unsurprising that the US accounts for around two-thirds of government requests for data, making 12,444 compared with the combined figure of 17,000 for the rest of the nations listed in the report. Meanwhile, the US requested information about 40,322 Yahoo accounts, while other governments asked for data about 22,400.
Yahoo disclosed information about users in 92 per cent of requests made by the US government, with 55 per cent of it representing "non-content data" such as alternate email address, name, location, and IP address, login details and such given at registration.
However, 37 per cent of data requests ended with Yahoo user content being disclosed to the US government, with data such as messages in Yahoo Mail or Yahoo Messenger, photos on Flickr and other files upload to Yahoo made available.
The UK ranks sixth on Yahoo's transparency report for number of data requests made, with 1,709 requests for information about 2,832 different accounts.
Yahoo complied with 64 per cent of requests made by the UK government, with 347 Yahoo users having information about their content handed over. The UK sits behind the US, Germany, Italy, Taiwan and France in the list of government data requests made.
"Our legal department demands that government data requests be made through lawful means and for lawful purposes," said Yahoo General Counsel Ron Bell on the launch of the report.
"We regularly push back against improper requests for user data, including fighting requests that are unclear, improper, overbroad or unlawful," he continued.
"In addition, we mounted a two-year legal challenge to the 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and recently won a motion requiring the US Government to consider further declassifying court documents from that case," Bell added.
Earlier this year, Yahoo won a court ruling that allowed the release of records that showed it opposed demands to hand over data under Prism when the scheme was first launched in 2008.
Nonetheless, whether web firms are complicit or not, documents released by Snowden claim the NSA is collecting data on "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet".
