Every company that stores information - from banks to phone companies to email providers - should have policies and guidelines for responding to requests for user information from law enforcement agencies, courts, etc. These are ours.
Most of this information is intended for law enforcement, judicial, and regulatory personnel. If you are none of these and have questions, find answers in our
Pinterest stores and maintains user information as described in our
We can’t guarantee that the information described in the
Please note, we may call to confirm submissions in order to ensure legitimacy. If possible, in your request, provide a link/URL to a publicly available contact number when submitting requests. If we are unable to confirm the submission, it could result in a delay in our response.
To compel Pinterest to provide any user’s information, you must obtain a valid subpoena, court order or search warrant (“Law Enforcement Request”). To compel Pinterest to provide any user’s content, you must obtain a valid search warrant.
You can’t compel Pinterest to provide any user information unless you obtain a valid U.S. court order (via the mutual legal assistance treaties or letter rogatory).
To respond to your request(s), we’ll need:
In order to ensure your
Pinterest must be notified in accordance with applicable U.S. law or valid legal process via our
We’ll only respond to requests from law enforcement. If you aren’t law enforcement and have an issue,
Acceptance of legal process doesn’t waive any objections Pinterest may have, including jurisdiction or proper service.
Our policy is to notify users of Law Enforcement Requests by providing them with a complete copy of the request before producing their information to law enforcement. We may make exceptions to this policy if:
If we receive a National Security Letter (NSL) from the U.S. government that includes an indefinite non-disclosure order, our policy is to ask the government to seek judicial review of the order pursuant to the USA FREEDOM Act.
In cases where notice isn’t provided because of a court order or emergency situation, our policy is to provide notice to the user once the court order or emergency situation has expired.
Note: Officer authored affidavits, descriptions, cover letters or similar statements are not sufficient to preclude notice to our users. You must provide a court order issued in accordance with 18 U.S.C. § 2705(b) or cite an applicable statute if you wish to prohibit user notice of your Law Enforcement Request.
If we seek reimbursement for the actual costs of preserving and/or producing information, Pinterest will provide a good faith estimate of such costs as part of our production or upon law enforcement’s request prior to our processing. Costs are based on the amount of data, time, and resources required to process and query the raw data Pinterest maintains.
Pinterest provides a certification from its records custodian with each production but is not generally able to provide in person testimony or expert witness.
If you are a user and aware of imminent harm to an individual or individuals, please contact local law enforcement authorities immediately.
In a situation where there is an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury, law enforcement can submit a request for disclosure of user information to Pinterest. This request can be submitted through our
We'll only respond to emails from law enforcement. If you aren't law enforcement and have an issue, browse our help articles. Emailing this alias is considered abuse and may result in action being taken on your Pinterest account.
Pinterest will review and respond to these requests on a case-by-case basis.
Consistent with these law enforcement guidelines, Pinterest requires all requests for user information be limited to specific and known users for lawful purposes. Pinterest has not and does not participate in the collection of bulk user information at the government’s request. Pinterest opposes compelled back doors and supports reforms to limit bulk surveillance requests.
Users on Pinterest have a display name (at the top of their profile) and a unique username (in their profile's URL). To find an account, we need the username or the email address on the account. The email address is private and generally only attainable from the Pinner themselves, or in NCMEC CyberTips.
To find a username:
View our most recent
Pinterest is an online tool for discovering, collecting, and organizing interests. You can save links to media content (ex: images or video) from across the internet, or upload your own images to Pinterest (you can't upload audio or video directly to Pinterest right now). You can also browse Pinterest to find content that other users have saved.
You save Pins to boards. You can invite other people to save Pins to a board with you. You can follow other users’ boards and save or comment on other users’ Pins.
You can browse the Pins of other users or boards in your home feed.
You can discover new Pins, boards, and users by browsing our topic feeds or searching for specific content or users.
Pins
A Pin is comprised of media content (an image, audio or video), a short description and a link. There are a few ways to save Pins, via: (1) pinterest.com, (2) the Pinterest browser button, (3) the Pinterest mobile application for iOS or Android and (4) a Save button that third party content owners choose to add to their websites.
When saving a Pin, you can customize the Pin's description and choose the board to save it to.
In some cases, the website or content owner prepopulates the Pin's description with information about the content (like "lazy_cat.jpg" or “Confessional Cheesecake Recipe | via mbarton.org”).
After saving, users can edit or change the description. You can also move Pins between boards or save the same Pin to multiple boards.
Boards
A board is a collection of Pins usually organized around a theme or idea. You can invite other Pinterest users to save Pins to your boards.
Boards can be public or secret. Only you and anyone you invite to a secret board can see the Pins you've saved to that secret board.
Saved Pins
You can save other users’ Pins on Pinterest to your own boards. In some cases, the user you’re saving from may not be the original user who saved it(ex: user X repinned it from user Y who repinned it from user Z, the original content poster).
If you delete a Pin, it doesn't delete other saves of that Pin from other people's boards.
Comments
Anyone can comment on Pins they can see. You can delete your own comments but not comments from other users. Comments are public if the board is public.
Note: What looks like the first comment in a Pin is actually the Pin description.
Messages
You can send private messages to one or more users on Pinterest. Messages may be restricted based on a user's age or their social permission settings.
Search Terms
Pinterest has its own search bar that works as a search engine.
When looking for ideas on Pinterest, you can input a single word or combination of words in the search bar. This will provide results that include Pins, Boards, and Accounts. All search terms that a user inputs can be recovered and presented as a list to law enforcement.
Profile
All Pinterest profiles are public and include certain self-provided information as well as boards, Pins, Tries, followers and the people they're following. The info available on a profile includes:
We don't require you to provide your real name, nor do we verify your name, age or location.
You can