Apple Says User Data Demand Is On The Rise

Apple’s latest transparency report shows a rise in worldwide demands for data.

The company revealed that this year it has received 32,342 requests — which is a 9 percent increase from the last reporting period — for 163,823 devices in the second half of the year. Germany came out on top with 13,704 requests for data on 26,160 devices, which Apple said was mostly due to stolen devices. The U.S. came in second with 4,570 requests for 14,911 devices.

In addition, Apple said that it received 4,177 requests for account data on around 40,641 accounts, which is a 25 percent boost on the previous reporting period. The increase can be attributed to China’s request for thousands of devices’ worth of data during one fraud investigation.

The company also saw a 30 percent increase in requests to save data for up to three months in 1,579 cases, which impacted 4,033 accounts. It received anywhere between 0 and 499 national security orders.

Apple is not the only company to see a boost in data requests this year. Earlier this month Twitter revealed in its own transparency report that it had received more U.S. government demands for user data between January and June of this year than its previous reporting period. In fact, it received 10 percent more requests during the current reporting period — the largest percentage increase in three years.

“Since the inception of Twitter’s Transparency Report in 2012, we have received government information requests from 84 different countries,” according to the report. “When we began reporting in 2012, the vast majority of information requests were submitted by the United States (80 percent of all global requests). While the United States remains the top requester in this report, requests from the United States comprise only 32 percent of global government information requests.”

The other top requesters were the United Kingdom, Turkey, France, India and Germany, with 13.7 percent, 6.4 percent, 6.2 percent, 5.1 percent and 4.6 percent of total information requests, respectively.