The EFF has published its annual Who Has Your Back? report. The idea is that they look at those technology companies that deal with our private data and rate them on the following criteria
- Follows industry-accepted best practices
- Tells users about government data demands
- Discloses policies on data retention
- Discloses government content removal requests
- Pro-user public policy: opposes backdoors
For better or worse all but the most paranoid of us use several of these companies (7 in my case) so it’s worth knowing which ones are looking out for their users and which are selling our data or rolling over for the government.
If you’re looking for the TL;DR, the chart at the beginning of the report will tell you who the good guys are and how the others are failing. If you’re looking for a deeper dive, each company’s performance is discussed in detail later in the report. There are also links to the policies and transparency reports for each of the companies.
Most people probably aren’t going to stop using a company that doesn’t rate a perfect score but it’s useful to know who’s doing what and to adjust your behavior accordingly. It’s an interesting report and everyone should at least look at the chart. Unless, that is, you’re one of the paranoid that stays off the grid. Of course, in that case you probably aren’t reading this.