Pierluigi Paganini January 30, 2015

The Reddit social news website issued its first transparency report shows it complied with only 32 user info requests in 2014.

Reddit, the popular social news website has released its first Reddit transparency report that details data related the requests for user information and requests for content removal the company received in 2014.

It is not a surprise that the company receives requests for content removal, consider that in many cases the platform is used by criminal crews and hackers to share information and links to repositories of data stolen in a data breach.

Reddit received 55 requests for user information (registration data, content uploaded by users, log data) and no National Security Letters or any other classified request for user information.

‘A national security letter (NSL) is an administrative subpoena issued by the FBI in authorized national security investigations “to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities”‘ as reported by Wikipedia.

58% of the user info requests are government & civil requests, meanwhile the percentage of requests from US states & federal government that were fulfilled is 64%. It is curious to note that low number of international requests, 5 in all, that anyway weren’t satisfied according to a company policy:

“Reddit is a US-based company. As such, we will not turn over user information in response to a formal request by a non-US government unless a US court requires it,” they shared.

The Reddit transparency report reveals that the company has received requests from state and local government agencies in 15 different US states, meanwhile 30% of the civil and US federal or state government requests it received included a court order prohibiting the company from notifying users. According to the Reddit privacy policy, the company wants to give its users the information they need to seek legal advice before their records are provided to the authorities. The only exception is the case where a court order requests the opposite.

“In 2014, we successfully fought back against two civil subpoenas that sought to unmask more than a dozen anonymous users.” states the Reddit transparency report.

I confess you that I’m surprised by the relative low number of requests considering that Reddit has 174 million registered users. Someone speculated that the reason for a so small number of requests is the fact that the company maintains IP addresses of its connected users for 90 days and request the user sign in before publishing any content.

Reddit regularly receives notices demanding the removal of content shared by its users for several reasons, including violations of copyright, trademark or national law. Before the deletion of the content in response to law enforcement requests, the Reddit staff examine the content and the related removal request.

“We rejected many copyright takedown requests because they did not include the information required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).” states the report.

Of the 218 requests, 176 requests claim and only 8 are related to trademark violation.

Enjoy the report …

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Reddit,  transparency report)