Dave LeClair
Posts: 75 +1
A new report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has provided rankings for many of the top companies with access to users' personal information. The report focuses on how willing each company is to fight to protect the private information of its users. This report specifically focuses on how the companies will handle government demands for access to private data.
The EFF report looks at six categories: whether the company requires a warrant for content, whether it tells users about government data requests, if it publishes transparency reports, if the company publishes law enforcement guidelines, whether the company is willing to fight for users' privacy rights in courts, and if it fights for users’ privacy rights in Congress.
Only Twitter and Sonic.net get a star in each one of these categories. Dropbox and LinkedIn do everything on the list except fight for users' rights in courts, and Google missed the mark on telling its users about government requests for access to data.
Yahoo!, Apple, and AT&T only earned a star in one category. Apple and AT&T are willing to fight for users' rights in congress, while Yahoo! is willing to fight in courts.
Verizon, AT&T's largest competitor for mobile supremacy in the US, is one of two companies on the list to get starts in zero categories, with MySpace being the other. Unfortunately, this is not the first time these two companies have received such ranking, and so it seems neither is taking steps to improve its protection of users' data.
Internet users put personal data out there all the time, and knowing which companies are on your side is certainly useful information. Make sure to have a look at the full report to see all the information about the 18 companies assessed.
