Worst Companies At Protecting User Privacy: Skype, Verizon, Yahoo 113
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.
I call B.S. on this report (Score:4, Informative)
The EFF is grading companies based on the following criteria (quoted verbatim):
1) Tell users about data demands: a public commitment to inform users when their data is sought by the government.
2) Be transparent about government requests: transparency about when and how often companies hand data to the government.
3) Fight for users’ privacy rights in the courts
4) Fight for users’ privacy in Congress
Criteria #1 and #2 might be important, but more for people who live at the edge of the law or might be suspected (possibly wrongly) of ties to terrorist groups than to the average citizen.
Criteria #3 and #4 are peripherally important to citizens but are tactically important to the EFF.
When I think about user privacy on the Internet, I think of the aggregation and analysis of data on each person (anonymously, or identified by name) based on tracking cookies, social networking and forum posts, location and call data, online and credit card purchase history, and other information obtained via Internet search. The four categories the EFF is analyzing would be far down on the list.
Re:Good to know... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:This is solely about governmental privacy (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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 [slashdot.org], more tracking [slashdot.org], requests for FTC audit regarding cookie usage and privacy [slashdot.org], even more tracking [slashdot.org], violating European laws by tracking on third-party sites [slashdot.org], filing a patent to track us on other sites [slashdot.org], not answering Congressional questions regarding whether they are tracking users still [slashdot.org], $15 bn lawsuit for illegal tracking [slashdot.org]
2) Sharing with third-parties: Facebook Sharing [slashdot.org], sharing pics with advertisers [slashdot.org], three US Senators telling Facebook to quit sharing data [slashdot.org], sharing IDs with third parties so they can be tracked [slashdot.org], home addresses and phone numbers [slashdot.org], a bug exposed millions of accounts of personal details [slashdot.org]
3) Automatically making data public: News Feed [slashdot.org], Facebook Connect [slashdot.org], crap like this [slashdot.org], settled with the FTC after making information that was set to private go public on numerous occasions, and agreed to not do it again [slashdot.org]
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:Where is Google? (Score:1, Informative)
When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.
Time [time.com]
But im sure you will just call me a "shill" too because you can't produce a rebuttal to simple facts like this.