In this photo illustration, a computer in a coffee shop displays onscreen the new Apple App store. Getty/ Dan Kitwood
The Electronic Frontiers Foundation released on May 1 a report that rated media companies on how far they will go to protect consumer privacy. The rating was based on how many of six criteria each company fulfilled; Twitter and Sonic.net (a California-based low-cost broadband provider) ranked the highest, meeting all of EFF’s criteria. Verizon and MySpace were last, adhering to none of the six categories. Apple, AT&T, and Yahoo also fared dismally.
The EFF criteria were: requiring a warrant before releasing user content; telling users when data is requested about them; publishing transparency reports annually about how often they provide/are asked to provide data for the government; publishing the guidelines that govern their releases of data for law enforcement purposes; fighting for user privacy in court cases; and advocating for implementing laws that protect user privacy in the U.S. Congress. Out of all these, the one least fulfilled was fighting for privacy rights in court, which — as the report says — could mean that some companies never faced such situations. Publishing transparency reports and telling users about government requests for data came second in low fulfillment levels.
Too bad: transparency seems to be what users care the most about when it comes to trusting internet companies with their information. 54% of U.K. consumers, for example, said they feel better about a brand if they know what tracking practices they use, according to research from Evidon, which collects data on how other companies collect consumer information (they track the trackers, in other words, and then sell them the gathered data as an aid to efficiency). The same report shows that consumers care more about companies being honest about what happens to their data than about how well their data is safeguarded (61% vs. 55%).
So the numbers are in: if you want to up your rep with consumers, focus less on security and more on transparency.
