Slashdot Mirror
EFF: Trust Twitter — Not Apple Or Verizon — To Protect Your Privacy
tdog17 writes "Verizon and MySpace scored a zero out of a possible six stars in a test of how far 18 technology service providers will go to protect user data from government data demands. Twitter and Internet service provider Sonic.net scored a perfect six in the third annual Electronic Frontier Foundation 'Who Has Your Back?' report. Apple, AT&T and Yahoo ranked near the bottom, each scoring just one star. 'While we are pleased by the strides these companies have made over the past couple years, there’s plenty of room for improvement. Amazon holds huge quantities of information as part of its cloud computing services and retail operations, yet does not promise to inform users when their data is sought by the government, produce annual transparency reports, or publish a law enforcement guide. Facebook has yet to publish a transparency report. Yahoo! has a public record of standing up for user privacy in courts, but it hasn't earned recognition in any of our other categories. Apple and AT&T are members of the Digital Due Process coalition, but don’t observe any of the other best practices we’re measuring. ... We remain disappointed by the overall poor showing of ISPs like AT&T and Verizon in our best practice categories.'"
Indeed, Apple for example ranks poorly because they say nothing, about anything, ever. The same reason that Greenpeace scored them poorly for environmental friendliness –they'd published no reports saying "we will eliminate xyz chemical from our packaging by abc year", mostly because they'd already eliminated xyz chemical.
Yes, because contrary to all the pro-Microsoft, anti-Google FUD that gets posted around, Google is one of the few companies that's actually done a fairly decent job of protecting data. Even in the case where they collected a bunch of Wifi data with their street cars there's a) No evidence they did anything with it, and b) It was them who approached the various government agencies responsible for protecting privacy around the globe admitting they fucked up rather than simply deleting it and trying to cover it up.
Compare this to companies like Microsoft, whom I know has sold my MSN contact list details on given that links have been made to people with whom I have zero connection other than via MSN messenger on Facebook and LinkedIn and Facebook that has explicitly broken the law by breaching the Data Protection Act by allowing friends to opt 3rd party companies in to accessing my data - something which only I can legally do.
Therein lies the problem, the gulf between the FUD spread by Microsoft and Facebook about Google and the reality of how bad Google actually is is quite large. I've yet to find one shred of evidence of Google passing my data on without my permission, or in a way I did not expect, which is more than can be said by just about every other tech company including companies like Oracle that explicitly send me marketing e-mails despite explicitly opting out on sign up.
As the summary points out, Google also publishes a transparency report and such, and provides links to original copies of DMCA requests where they've received them and had to act on them. This is all far more than most other companies.
It's not that I'm a fanboy, I can't particularly say I support any company given that they're there to make money off me at the end of the day so hence I can never trust that they have my best interests at heart, but what I can personally judge companies on is the reality of how they've acted with regards to me personally, and both right now and historically, Google is still by far one of the most ethical tech companies out there based on empirical evidence in my experience.
For one, Google doesn't seem to need to pay for stupid FUD campaigns that have become so obvious and annoying that Microsoft and others have been doing so prominently. That alone says a lot.