(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)
Privacy International (PI) has undertaken a study that reveals the privacy threats and rank the positions in this matter of key players on the Internet services market. The objective of the research is not only to point fingers but also to find out trends and emergent issues related to privacy on the Internet.
The report was issued by PI after a six-month investigation on the privacy practices covering search, email, e-commerce and social networking sites.
The methodology used included 20 main parameters among which data collection and processing, data retention, openness and transparency or responsiveness to customers' complaints.
Data was gathered from newspaper articles, privacy policies, blogs, submissions to government inquiries, information obtained from present and former company staff, technical analyses and interviews with company representatives.
Because the 2007 rankings are a precedent, PI will regard the current report as a consultation report and will establish a broad outreach for two months to ensure that any new and relevant information is taken into account before publishing a full report in September.
The research has coded the companies by colour, from green "privacy-friendly and privacy enhancing", to black, "comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy". While there was no company ranked in the green area, and only few were ranked blue, "generally privacy aware", (such as eBay, LiveJournal, Wikipedia), the only company coded black by the preliminary stage of the research was Google.
Google was mostly criticized for its lack of transparency, PI considering that its data retention policy was not very clear. "Google maintains records of all search strings and the associated IP-addresses and time stamps for at least 18 to 24 months and does not provide users with an expungement option. Google has access to additional personal information, including hobbies, employment, address, and phone number, contained within user profiles in Orkut. Google often maintains these records even after a user has deleted his profile or removed information from Orkut."
Google's privacy policy was considered "vague, incomplete and possibly deceptive", and its response to customers' complaints, a poor one.
A Google employee's blog, Matt Cutts, complained by the fact that the company was not given credit for not handing over data to the US Government and for not having leaked search queries of its users.
In an open letter addressed to Google's CEO Eric Schmidt, Privacy International accused Google for having smeared its good name. "Two European journalists have independently told us that Google representatives have contacted them with the claim that 'Privacy International has a conflict of interest regarding Microsoft'." PI also stated no company had made such accusation in its 17 years of life.
PI asked for an apology from Google, "but if you cannot deliver this then I think you should reflect carefully on the actions of your representatives before embarking on what I believe amounts to a smear campaign. As with Microsoft, eBay and any other organisation we are more than happy to work with you to help resolve the many privacy challenges for Google that our report has highlighted."
A Race to the Bottom: Privacy Ranking of Internet Service Companies, A
Consultation report (9.06.2007)
http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd³³0³=x-347-553961
Privacy International accuses Google of smear campaign (11.06.2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/11/google_privacy_international/
Why I disagree with Privacy International (11.06.2007)
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/privacy-international-loses-all-credibil...
An Open Letter to Google (10.06.2007)
http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd³³0³=x-347-553964