Facebook reveals 68% of UK authorities' requests for information on users were granted in first half of 2013

The report showed that government agents from 74 countries in total had asked for information about 38,000 users in the same period.

In the United States, between 11,000 and 12,000 requests for information were made and in 79 per cent of cases Facebook complied.

In Italy authorities submitted 1,705 requests and information was provided in 53 per cent of cases while in India half of the 3,245 requests returned information to government authorities.

The figures don’t reveal any further detail about the nature of the enquiries or the kind of information released by Facebook.

However, Colin Stretch, Facebook General Counsel, said: "We scrutinise each request for legal sufficiency under our terms and the strict letter of the law, and require a detailed description of the legal and factual bases for each request.

"We fight many of these requests, pushing back when we find legal deficiencies and narrowing the scope of overly broad or vague requests. When we are required to comply with a particular request, we frequently share only basic user information, such as name."

Facebook said it planned to release more detailed information in future reports.

Other countries included in the report were Australia, where 64 per cent of 546 requests returned information; France, which had a return of 39 per cent for 1,547 requests; and Germany, where 37 per cent of 1,886 requests were granted.