Following the footsteps of tech giants Google and Facebook, Yahoo has published its first report detailing the requests it gets from Governments to reveal user information. The Singapore Government made requests on 189 individual accounts in the first six months of this year, said Yahoo in a report published over the weekend. Yahoo added that Government data requests were generally made in connection with criminal investigations.

The company complied with 59 per cent of these requests. It also revealed that of all the Government requests received, it disclosed "non-content data" in 73 or 53 per cent of the requests. Such data consists of items such as information captured at the time of registration and includes name, location, and IP address, login details and billing information. Other transactional information such as who e-mails are being sent to and received from are also included.

In two instances, Yahoo released detailed data to the Singapore government. This includes text within e-mails and Messenger services, images on its photo sharing site, Flickr, and even Yahoo Calendar event details.

Out of the 17 countries listed by Yahoo, the highest number of requests came from the US government, which demanded that the firm handed over data on over 40,000 users. The British government sought data on 2,832 accounts, while Australian authorities requested data on some 800 accounts.