Tumblr lets loose its first Transparency Report
In an effort to be fully open, Tumblr unveiled a Transparency Report on Monday that detailed all government requests for user data. This report shows that in 2013, the company received 462 requests and it gave the government data 76 percent of the time. Tumblr said that from now on it will publish these Transparency Reports twice a year.
"Consistent with our core principles, we'd like to shine some light on an issue that is deeply important to both our community and the greater public: government requests for user information," Tumblr wrote in a blog post. "For the sake of transparency, and to ensure that our users are well informed, we're publishing a series of posts on this blog explaining how, when, and why governments requested information about Tumblr users in 2013, and how we responded to those requests."
Yahoo-owned Tumblr is a massive blogging platform -- it hosts more than 170 million blogs worldwide. Despite its size, the company said it has never received any classified requests for user data from the National Security Agency. Rather, the requests are likely to be along the lines of a local sheriff's office looking for messages related to a criminal lawsuit or the IP address of a suspected hacker.
