New research from digital privacy firm Proton has revealed the staggering scale of how Google, Apple, and Meta share user data with US government authorities, and the numbers are only growing.
According to the findings, the three tech giants have collectively handed over data from more than 3.5 million user accounts over the past decade, representing a rise of more than 770% since tech companies first began publishing transparency reports on government requests. The data shared includes emails, files, messages, and other highly personal information.
The pace shows no sign of slowing. In the first half of 2025 alone, information from more than 200,000 US accounts was disclosed. When data shared under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is factored in, the total climbs to approximately 6.9 million user accounts.
The trend isn’t confined to the US. European government requests for user data rose by around 40% year-on-year, jumping from 164,472 accounts in the first half of 2024 to 231,199 in the same period of 2025. Proton attributes the sheer volume of disclosures to the fact that data held by major platforms is not protected by end-to-end encryption, leaving it accessible to legal requests.
Raphael Auphan, COO of Proton, warned of the long-term implications: “Big Tech companies have collected years of searches, messages, files, location data, and other activity, often starting when users are children. Each request can tap into this detailed history, revealing patterns, routines, and relationships. The issue isn’t that companies comply — they’re legally obligated to do so — but that they have amassed such massive, centralised stores of data and have the ability to decrypt it at will. Governments can change, laws can change, and until full end-to-end encryption is implemented, every request has the potential to expose decades of private life.”
The research comes against a troubling backdrop in the US. In March 2026, FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed that the agency is purchasing commercially available location data on Americans without obtaining warrants, a practice that privacy advocates argue circumvents traditional legal safeguards and raises serious civil liberties concerns.
Proton, which protects more than 100 million accounts and over 100,000 businesses globally, applies end-to-end encryption by default across its services, meaning that even Proton itself cannot access user emails, files, calendar entries, or contacts. The company argues that the solution to mass government access to data lies not in hoping platforms will resist legal pressure, but in ensuring the data is never accessible to begin with.
