AT&T, WhatsApp Deemed Most Unreliable Online Service Providers in User Data Privacy Study
Digital rights organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently published its fifth annual "Who has your back?" report in which it lauded Apple, Dropbox and slammed companies like Verizon and WhatsApp.
"Who has your back?" report is about online service providers' transparency and privacy practices when it comes to government requests for accessing user data.
EFF awarded five stars to five companies, namely: Adobe, Apple, CREDO, Dropbox, Sonic, Wickr, Wikimedia, WordPress.com, and Yahoo.
Companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, reddit and Twitter, were awarded four stars which means they are doing good but have a little room for improvement.
However, EFF noted that the social networking giant Facebook is still failing to fully disclose when it blocks content or closes accounts in response to government requests.
"While Facebook does report on some content restriction internationally, it does not provide transparency into ways it cooperates with the U.S. government to block content and remove accounts. For example, EFF learned through a public-records request that Facebook processed 74 requests from California prison officials in 2014 to suspend inmate profiles. These takedowns requests are not disclosed in Facebook's transparency report," it said.
WhatsApp Fails The Transparency Test
Companies that fared the worst, with just one star, are AT&T and WhatsApp. Verizon only managed two stars for following industry-accepted best practices and another for disclosing government content-removal request.
"WhatsApp should publicly require a warrant before turning over user content, publish a law enforcement guide and transparency report, have a stronger policy of informing users of government requests, and disclose its data retention policies.," EFF noted.
"Overwhelmingly, tech giants began publishing annual reports about government data requests, promising to provide users notice when the government sought access to their data, and requiring a search warrant before handing over user content," the EFF said.
