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Yahoo Discloses Number Of U.S. Government Data Requests

SUNNYVALE (CBS/AP) -- Yahoo is the latest company to disclose how many requests for user data it has received from U.S. government agencies, putting the number between 12,000 and 13,000 in the six months that ended on May 31.

Yahoo Inc. CEO Marissa Mayer and General Counsel Ron Bell said in a blog post late Monday that the most common requests concerned fraud homicides, kidnappings, and other criminal investigations.

Yahoo says it plans to update the report twice a year.

Internet companies have asked the U.S. government to be able to share how many requests it received related to national security and how it handled them. Those requests were made as part of Prism, the recently revealed highly classified National Security Agency program that seizes records from Internet companies.

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