14 DAY TRIAL // Nowadays, Internet privacy is one of the most important things for most of us, but not all companies are willing to protect your rights against governments and various agencies.
A report called “Who Has Your Back,” created by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, brings forth 18 popular tech companies and assesses their activity in several important areas where they help protect your privacy or not.
As mentioned, the report covers several areas. For instance, you can view which companies require warrants for consent, tell users about government data requests and publish transparency reports.
It’s also possible to view the companies that publish law enforcement guidelines, fight for users’ privacy rights in courts and in Congress.
Out of the pack, only two companies got the maximum score, namely Twitter and Sonic.net. At the opposite end of the spectrum there are two other companies, MySpace and Verizon, that do nothing to protect their users.
Apple, AT&T and Yahoo! don’t stand too well either, as they only get one point each. While Apple and AT&T will fight for your rights in Congress, Yahoo! limits its activity to the legal courts.
Facebook, the biggest social network in the world, gets half the maximum score as they require a warrant, publish law enforcement guidelines and fights for your rights in Congress.
Another Internet giant, Google, gets a near-perfect score as they only fail to tell users about any data requests from the governments.
Dropbox, Spideroak and LinkedIn missed the maximum score because they don’t fight for the user’s privacy rights in front of the judge.
Software giant Microsoft gets four out of six points. The company doesn’t tell its users of data requests from governments and isn’t much in favor of going to court to protect their user’s privacy.
In the end, what this report reveals is the fact that your data isn’t as safe as you thought it was. Since it’s certain that you use at least a few of these services, it’s easy to see who “has your back” and who doesn’t.
