Over the past 10 years, the number of law enforcement requests for user data supported by Apple has increased by 500%.
The new report Surfshark, the site to which the link is directed Phonearena the data included requests sent over 10 years — a total of 9 million cases in 190 countries, sent to companies such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta.
The percentage of requests supported by companies out of the total number is shown below:
The report claims that the number of requests for user data is growing every year, with 2022 being a particularly busy year, accounting for about 25% of all cases mentioned in the report.
The US and EU authorities (Germany, France, Ireland, Portugal, and Belgium) are the most frequent requesters of the data, accounting for 58% of the total from 2013 to 2022. Most requests are related to criminal investigations.
Apple has been at the top of the list for supporting requests since 2016, although it has been implementing many efforts to protect user privacy.