Microsoft took action on 63% of 'revenge porn' requests

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It happens a lot: two people break up, one of them is angry and post private, explicit photos and videos of the other person online.

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It's called "revenge porn."

Both Microsoft and Google announced new policies last summer to remove "revenge porn" from their search engines if the victim fills out a form and requests it. Microsoft will even take the photos off of the internet entirely if the content is within its reach, like if it's been shared via Xbox Live or its OneDrive cloud storage service.

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But it turns out Microsoft doesn't automatically say yes to every revenge porn request, just like it doesn't agree to every request made for other reasons to remove content.

Out of 537 revenge porn requests in the second half of 2015 (the first few months since it enacted the policy), Microsoft agreed to take down or block the content in question 338 times, or 63%, it says in "Content Removal Report."

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Why wouldn't Microsoft comply with 37% of cases? Two reasons, Microsoft's director of corporate responsibility explained in a blog post:

1) Microsoft asked for more information to "make a determination" on the request.

2) Microsoft looked at the "content in question" and felt that it doesn't meet the revenge porn criteria such as it doesn't "identify the victim in the image" or it doesn't contain "nudity."

On the other hand, when it comes to copyright infringement requests, of which there were nearly 60 million in the second half of last year, Microsoft complied with 98%.

Revenge porn isn't the toughest thing to prove to Microsoft. The content that falls under the "right to be forgotten" rule for European countries takes that honor. Out of 8,638 protested URLs in the second half of 2015, Microsoft only agreed to block 41% from its search engine.

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