EFF's 2015 Data Privacy Report Lauds Apple, Dropbox, Slams Verizon
Context & Ripple Effects
The EFF's 2015 edition of its government-data-request scorecard puts consumer cloud companies on one side and carriers on the other: Apple and Dropbox are praised for transparency practices, while Verizon is called out for falling short. The scorecard has already become a recurring benchmark — earlier in 2015 the EFF itself drew attention for an Android-only privacy app that blasted Apple's developer terms, showing the group is willing to ding even companies it later credits.
Two years on, the pattern holds: the EFF's 2017 report again names Dropbox among the best performers and again lists Verizon among the laggards alongside AT&T, Comcast, and T-Mobile. That consistency matters because these scores feed directly into how users and regulators judge which platforms can be trusted with data.
First-order effects
- Verizon enters the next reporting cycle under a documented two-strike record, giving competitors and advocacy groups a concrete citation whenever carrier data practices are debated.
- Apple and Dropbox gain a third-party trust credential they can point to in enterprise sales and user communications, at zero cost to themselves.
Second-order effects
- Carriers like Verizon face pressure either to match web-platform transparency standards or to argue that telecom data obligations make parity impossible — a distinction the EFF's scoring does not accept.
- The report gives coalition cover for cross-industry alliances: by 2017, Verizon joins Apple, Dropbox, and others filing an amicus brief backing cellphone location privacy at the Supreme Court, showing laggards aligning with leaders when litigation rather than voluntary disclosure is the battleground.
Third-order effects
- A recurring independent scorecard turns privacy disclosure into a competitive metric that persists across product cycles — though it cuts both ways, as Apple's later experience with a French startup association's complaint alleging iOS data collection without permission shows how quickly a praised company's halo can be contested.
- If the EFF's rankings keep splitting consumer-internet firms from telecom carriers, expect regulatory scrutiny of carrier data practices to increasingly borrow the report's framing of who does and does not inform users.
The trend: Annual third-party privacy scorecards are hardening into a durable reputational ledger, separating consumer platforms that disclose government requests from carriers that resist doing so.