The Electronic Frontier Foundation (or EFF) issued a new report this week entitled ‘Who Has Your Back.’ The document discusses major tech companies and their user privacy policies, and ranks them on transparency and other categories.
Interestingly enough, Apple was one of nine tech firms awarded a perfect score by the EFF. The Cupertino company received a star in each of the 6 categories, for a total of 6 stars—a remarkable improvement over its 1-star rating just last year…
From the EFF report:
Apple earned credit in all 6 categories in this year’s Who Has Your Back report. Apple’s rating is particularly striking because it had lagged behind industry competitors in prior years, earning just one star in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Apple shows remarkable improvement in its commitments to transparency and privacy.
And a breakdown of Apple’s score:
Among the other companies that received perfect scores were Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Dropbox. At the other end of the spectrum, Adobe, Comcast and Foursquare each received 3 stars, Amazon and AT&T 2 stars, and Snapchat 1 star.
Since being named as a participant in the NSA’s PRISM program last summer, Apple has taken a number of steps to ease user concerns about privacy, including joining other companies in a fight for more transparency on government requests.
You can read the full EFF report here.