14 DAY TRIAL // The Facebook privacy blunder has made many users think twice before agreeing to hand their personal data to a tech company, and without a doubt, it’ll spark many substantial changes in the future that will regulate how firms use our details.
But for the time being, users in the US appear to feel the most comfortable handing their data to Tesla, Lyft, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple, according to a recent survey conducted by SurveyMonkey and Recode.
When asked which companies they trust the least with their personal information, no less than 56 percent of the Americans said Facebook. This kind of makes sense given the scandal that the social network is currently involved in, and this rating is likely to decline in the coming months and years as people forget about the whole privacy blunder.
Apple and Microsoft for the win
But on the other hand, companies like Apple and Microsoft continue to score impressively good, especially thanks to their fights with the US government in attempts to protect user privacy.
Apple, for instance, resisted a court order to break into the iPhone used by the San Bernardino shooter, forcing the FBI to eventually seek help from third parties. Apple claimed that developing a way to unlock iPhones would have compromised the security of all customers, and the FBI would have ended up in possession of tools exposing all devices, not only those used by criminals.
Microsoft, on the other hand, went to legal wars with the US government in a case involving user data stored on servers overseas. The software giant was requested to hand over user information located on data centers in Ireland, but Microsoft refused to it, claiming that US warrants should only be valid within the borders of the country.
In the end, it looks like this approach is paying off, as customers trust Microsoft and Apple more than others, though for the time being, Facebook seems to be the big loser of this privacy struggle.
