A Race to the Bottom - Privacy Ranking of Internet Service Companies

The report was compiled using data derived from public sources (newspaper articles, blog entries, submissions to government inquiries, privacy policies etc), information provided by present and former company staff, technical analysis and interviews with company representatives.  

Interim results are available here in PDF format: Interim Rankings

 PI is based in London, and has an office in Washington, D.C. Together with members in 40 countries, PI has conducted campaigns throughout the world on issues ranging from wiretapping and national security activities, to ID cards, video surveillance, data matching, police information systems and medical privacy, and works with a wide range of NGO’s, academic institutions and inter-governmental organizations.

  Campaigning against corporate privacy practices, e.g. Amazon  Identifying the problems in technology design, e.g.problems with advertising in Gmail  Monitoring and campaigning against the disclosure of data from companies to governments, e.g. EU-US PNR, SWIFT, Telecommunications companies  Founding and running the Big Brother Awards, now held annually in over 15 countries, that identify ‘worst corporate invaders’,  Campaigning against bad practice in account management, for instance preventing users from deleting accounts, e.g. against Amazon and eBay  Ranking countries for their privacy protection and surveillance levels,  Building particularly from our work on companies’ practices on customer account management and our expertise developed in the country rankings we are now positioned to develop rankings for companies.

 While a number of companies have demonstrated integrity in handling personal information (and we have been surprised by the number of ’social networking’ sites which are taking some of these issues quite seriously), we are witnessing an increased ‘race to the bottom’ in corporate surveillance of customers.

  PI has tracked the development of the Internet since the creation of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s. We have continually voiced our concern that this medium provides the potential for a haemorrhage of personal privacy, and we have argued for some years that Internet companies should embrace a wider range of privacy protections for users.  

 Increasing disclosure by consumers of personal information allows companies to capture and process data to a significant extent.

 In contrast to the 1990’s vision of the Internet, in which strong privacy could become a market differentiator, the reality in 2007 is that all major Internet players may move to establish a level of user surveillance that results in little or no choice for Internet users and relatively few meaningful privacy mechanisms.

 Too many companies presume that statements framed in legal language within their privacy policies actually describe their true information collection and processing practices.

 This material, submitted by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and coupled with a submission to the FTC from the New York State Consumer Protection Board, provided additional weight for our assessment that Google has created the most onerous privacy environment on the Internet.

  Google account holders that regularly use even a few of Google’s services must accept that the company retains a large quantity of information about that user, often for an unstated or indefinite length of time, without clear limitation on subsequent use or disclosure, and without an opportunity to delete or withdraw personal data even if the user wishes to terminate the service.

  The true difference between Google Inc and Microsoft Corp can be defined not so much by the data practices and privacy policies that exist between the two organizations, but by the corporate ethos and leadership exhibited by each.

privacyinternational.org