Apple gave customers' data to Indian government: Details here
Apple has released its transparency report, detailing how many customer data requests it got from the Indian government and how many it actually catered to. The report shows that the government placed 27 requests for device information and 18 for account-related data during the first six months of 2018. And, in most of the cases, the requests were met by the Cupertino giant.
What are device and account requests?
According to Apple, governments can place legal requests (via court orders, warrants or other ways) to gain information related to device and accounts of people. The device requests, as the name suggests, are related to identifiers (information used for identifying someone) related to iPhones/iPads such as IMEIs and serial numbers. Meanwhile, account requests are those related to account-based information like Apple IDs or emails.
Each request involved multiple identifiers
"One request may contain one or multiple identifiers (used for identifying someone)," Apple said in a statement. "We count the number of identifiers identified in each request and report the total number of identifiers by type" like for account or device.
Most requests met by Apple this year
In the first half of 2018, Apple got 27 requests for as many as 379 device identifiers, while 18 requests for nearly a thousand account-related identifiers from the Indian government. The company catered to 63% of device requests and 78% of account requests. In addition, it also provided financial information like credit card and gift card data of some users to the government.
Details of financial information requested by government
The Indian government placed as many as 34 requests seeking 3,199 financial identifiers, like credit card and gift card data, of the Apple customers. The company met 85% of these requests.
iTunes fraud triggered these requests
In the report, which details nearly every piece of information requested, Apple claimed that the number of requests related to account and financial identifiers is predominantly high due to the investigation of an iTunes gift card fraud. On the global scale, the company met nearly 80% of more than 32,000 requests for information related to some 1,63,000 devices.
