Every day, we trust countless Internet companies with our personal information. But do you know which sites truly protect your privacy from government eyes?
That is precisely the motivation behind the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) 2013 Who Has Your Back report, which sought out to rank top tech giants on six different privacy criteria. And ironically, Twitter, a site devoted to sharing personal thoughts with the world, received the highest score for keeping its mouth shut when it matters the most.
The popular social network received a perfect score in all six categories for the first time ever, earning praise for requiring warrants, telling users about government data requests, publishing transparency reports, publishing law enforcement guidelines, fighting for privacy rights in congress, and fighting for privacy rights in the courts. DropBox, LinkedIn, and Google fared well, but fell short of privacy perfection.
Verizon, meanwhile, finds itself at the very bottom of the proverbial privacy barrel. Along with social media ghost town Myspace, the mobile carrier failed in all six categories. Apple, AT&T, Yahoo, Comcast, and Amazon all fared almost as poorly.
The full 2013 Who Has Your Back report is available on the EFF website at https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013.
