Freedom of speech is essential to the Wikimedia movement—our projects cannot flourish in an ecosystem where individuals cannot speak freely. Our users trust us to protect their identities against unlawful disclosure and we take this responsibility seriously.
However, every year, governments, individuals, and corporations ask us to disclose user data. Often, we have no nonpublic information to disclose because we collect little nonpublic information about users and retain that information for a short period of time. But when we do have data, we carefully evaluate every request before considering disclosure. If the requests do not meet our standards — if they are overly broad, unclear, or irrelevant — we will push back on behalf of our users.
Compared to other companies, we received relatively few requests*
Company
Requests received
Requests granted
Facebook
28 147
17 851
Google
27 477
17 561
Twitter
1410
705
LinkedIn
72
34
Wikimedia
13
0
* Figures for Wikimedia include additional types of requests for user data that are not included in the other organizations' figures. See the FAQ for more details.