Civil Rights
Block on Trump's Asylum Ban Upheld by Supreme Court
With so much of our data, and our clients' data, transferred over the Internet, lawyers have an especially significant interest in data privacy. We aren't tweens visiting Justin Bieber sites. We are counselors with clients' financial records, identifying information, and sensitive case data stored on our computers, in the cloud, and occasionally, in our email inboxes.
When evaluating service providers, we have repeatedly advised our readers to look at the company's privacy policy, terms of service, and past practices. Who owns the data? Who can access it? Do they suffer frequent security breaches?
It's not just the company and hackers you have to worry about, however. Though the Feds aren't peeping into everyone's inboxes, if you have a client with a sensitive matter, isn't worth choosing the most stalwart provider?
The best place to start, in terms of protecting you from the government, is the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s annual “Who Has Your Back?” list. The EFF evaluates a number of cloud storage repositories, broadband providers, social networks, and other Internet companies, awarding stars in the following six categories:
Five or Six Stars (Near Privacy Perfection)
Looking for an Internet service provider? If you are in the Bay Area, Sonic.net earned a full six stars, easily annihilating Verizon, Comcast and AT&T. Other strong showings included Twitter (six), LinkedIn (five), Dropbox (five), SpiderOak (five), and Google (five).
Three to Four Stars (Acceptable)
Blogging platforms Wordpress and Tumblr earned four and three stars respectively. Microsoft also earned four, as did the appropriately-named Foursquare. Facebook scored three stars.
Zero to Two Stars (Fail)
Two star failures include Amazon, Comcast, and MySpace. One star shockers came from Yahoo!, Apple, and AT&T, while Verizon scored a pathetic zero stars.
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