Worst Companies At Protecting User Privacy: Skype, Verizon, Yahoo

First time accepted submitter SmartAboutThings writes "Apple and Microsoft are one of the worst companies at protecting our privacy, according to EFF's privacy report. Dropbox, Twitter and Sonic have some of the best scores." "Sonic" is California ISP Sonic.net, which tops the field with the EFF's only 4-star rating. Of ISPs with national presence, ATT and Comcast come in with a single star apiece, and Verizon gets a goose egg.

Comments

Good to know...

[nine-times]

Nice to know that among the 1 ISP option you have, they have a 0-star rating in keeping information private. I'm not sure what anyone is supposed to do with this information.

Re:Good to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sonic is like the Linux of ISPs. First of all, they run Linux for everything. They refuse to institute a bandwidth cap. They still offer Usenet feeds. Their bonded ASDL service is kick ass (the modems, however, leave something to be desired). It's cheap to buy a dedicated IP address (in fact, I think it's free, now), and you can even setup reverse DNS on your account management page! Basically, best ISP ever.

And now they're in race with AT&T to install fiber in San Francisco.

Apple and Microsoft are one of the worst companies

[bunratty]

Apple and Microsoft are one company now? What will they call it? Applesoft? Microple?

This is solely about governmental privacy

[Anubis IV]

The EFF did nothing at all to consider privacy in general, and in particular with regards to businesses and other private entities. The chart is only about how the companies are interacting with governmental bodies (e.g. Congress, law enforcement). Facebook is widely regarded as being horrible when it comes to privacy, but it's because they keep abusing their access to everyone's information by sharing it with third-parties, using it to follow them around the Internet, and failing to follow the settings the user has indicated.

Even companies that have been more benign have problems. Dropbox, for instance, had a notable bug earlier this year or late last where anyone could access anyone else's account. Their employees also have access to everyone's data and can read it at any time unless you encrypt it yourself. Where is the consideration for those sorts of factors?

I'm far more concerned with companies sharing my information for profit than I am with companies sharing my information with the government. You can support privacy laws in Washington all you want, but when the rubber hits the road if you're selling me out for a quick buck, I don't want to be providing you with my information.

Re:This is solely about governmental privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Google doesn't share any of your information with advertisers or other third-parties; their privacy policy is very clear on this. It's also totally obvious from a business perspective, because handing off that information to advertisers would be handing out a key business advantage for free. Goggle is not stupid.

As for government data requests, they publish the exact numbers and the percentage of requests they complied with. Based on the numbers it's pretty clear they fight many of the requests they get (e.g. all 42 requests from the Russian government have been denied this year). You can look at the numbers yourself: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/

Re:This is solely about governmental privacy

[Anubis IV]

Even though I'm confident you're either trying to be funny or are trolling, I'll respond in detail for the benefit of anyone else who might be ignorant on this topic.

To cherry-pick just a small handful of examples from Slashdot's archives:
1) Tracking us: Beacon, more tracking, requests for FTC audit regarding cookie usage and privacy, even more tracking, violating European laws by tracking on third-party sites, filing a patent to track us on other sites, not answering Congressional questions regarding whether they are tracking users still, $15 bn lawsuit for illegal tracking

2) Sharing with third-parties: Facebook Sharing, sharing pics with advertisers, three US Senators telling Facebook to quit sharing data, sharing IDs with third parties so they can be tracked, home addresses and phone numbers, a bug exposed millions of accounts of personal details

3) Automatically making data public: News Feed, Facebook Connect, crap like this, settled with the FTC after making information that was set to private go public on numerous occasions, and agreed to not do it again

There are dozens, if not hundreds of more examples of Facebook being slimy or criminal in their behavior if you just do a search for "Facebook privacy" here.

Re:I call B.S. on this report

[Doctor_Jest]

Criteria #1 and #2 are important to everyone because of the very thing you mentioned in the statement. People wrongly suspected of ties to terrorist groups or what the US government considers terrorist groups. I for one am appalled that the government can keep a blanket request for data secret (without a warrant... thanks PATRIOT Act!) and not only that, keep what you're being investigated of secret... They can demand your papers and documents but not tell you why? How is that not a violation of the Constitution? This isn't a Democrat/Republican problem... this is a GOVERNMENT problem. Our problem is the morons want the government to coddle them and keep them from going hungry on one end, yet turn a blind eye when the government invades their privacy and tells them what they can and cannot drink or eat.. (Bloomberg... you cheese-eating fuck-monkey, I'm looking at you.) And god forbid you criticize the government or president. You're a dirty terrorist if you think the government sucks. Yeah, right. Call me a terrorist then, you cocksucking asshats.

I'm getting increasingly frustrated with the entire process. Fuck 'em.

Re:Skype?

[Anonymous Coward]

Skype probably has a backdoor to allow governments to listen in, although the code is heavily obfuscated to try to prevent people from finding out the details via reverse engineering.