Spying on online users: Here's proof Indian govt is scaling it down

New Delhi: In a sign that Internet snooping by enforcement authorities may be declining, India made an average of about 13 requests a day to Google to access personal web details of users during July-December last year.

This was less than the average of 15 requests made daily in the January-June period by the country with the world's third-largest online user base at over 200 million.

India, the world's second most populous country, made 2,513 user data requests in July-December, about 7 percent lower than 2,691 in January-June 2013, as per Google's latest Transparency Report.

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India trailed the US, which made 57 requests daily in the second half of 2013, France (15) and Germany (14). The US made 10,574 requests during July-December to Google, followed by France 2,750, Germany 2,660, India 2,513, the UK 1,397 and Brazil 1,085.

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In the first half of 2013, India came second, after the US, on the list of countries take made the most user data requests to the search engine giant.

During January-June 2013, the US made 10,918 requests to Google, followed by India (2,691), Germany (2,311), France (2,011), the UK (1,274) and Brazil (1,239).

Globally, total requests rose 6 percent to 27,477 in the second half last year from 25,879 in the first half and they were up 28 percent from July-December 2012, when the tech giant received 21,389 requests from governments.

In the case of India, the number of user data requests rose 3 percent in the second half from 2,431 requests in the year-ago period.

Google publishes data for requests about user details, as also for removal of content on its various platforms, including search, images and YouTube, on a six-month basis.

PTI