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Mistrust of Google and Facebook is a 'Contagion' That Could Spread To Every Tech Company, Says Box CEO Aaron Levie (recode.net) 190

Posted by msmash from the domino's-effect dept.
Aaron Levie isn't worried about his company, Box, being regulated -- but he is worried about what happens if the government has to do something about Facebook. From a report: "It's a contagion because it's going to reduce trust in these types of platforms," Levie said on the latest episode of Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher. "The worst-case scenario for us is that Silicon Valley gets so far behind on these issues that we just can't be trusted as an industry," he said. "We rely on the Fortune 500 trusting Silicon Valley's technology, to some extent, for our success. When you see that these tools can be manipulated or they're being used in more harmful ways, or regulators are stamping them down, then that impacts anybody, whether you're consumer or enterprise."
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Mistrust of Google and Facebook is a 'Contagion' That Could Spread To Every Tech Company, Says Box CEO Aaron Levie More

Mistrust of Google and Facebook is a 'Contagion' That Could Spread To Every Tech Company, Says Box CEO Aaron Levie

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  • Mistrust of major companies isn't new (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Z00L00K ( 682162 ) on Monday July 09, 2018 @10:47AM (#56916548) Homepage Journal

    Earlier the mistrust was for IBM and Microsoft. Then Oracle was added. And now Facebook and Google.

    Also realize that the list just grows, the only way to get off the list is a liquidation.

    What's worse is that the mistrust against the top companies is just the tip of an iceberg - you have a large number of companies that aren't visible the same way like doubleclick, cxense, ioffer etc that probably are even worse since they don't provide any benefit at all.

    • You left out NSA from your list

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

        NSA isn't a company. It's something completely different together with KGB, MI5 etc.

        • Actually with the degree of outsourcing they've done since 2001 the NSA has become more of a company than ever before.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Mistrust of ANY for-profit business is only prudent, but Spybook and friends get double the mistrust for destroying privacy and turning the world into a surveillance society.

    • The trouble these days is that if fucking you gives money to the company, then the company will fuck you. There is no longer ethics, all that matters now is to provide dividends to shareholders even if it means the end of the company in the long run.

      • It's always been this way, but now it's in your face because you've become the product. The bullshit of Google's Do No Evil policy, combined with leaky sieve called Facebook, leads to deserved mistrust.

        The ethics of privacy depends on the perspective of if you're human, or a slave to Wall Street and shareholder return, as you cite. That other jurisdictions revolt as has happened with the GDPR in the EU is only natural. The thieves of privacy are more worried about maintaining their monopolies than their pro

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I think it reaches further than just to internet businesses - we have for decades been told that unregulated capitalism is the best way for all, but what we have seen all along is that you cannot trust companies to regulate themselves, and for obvious reasons: the purpose of a business is to make as much profit as possible, which is in direct contradiction to any form of regulation. This has a long and well-known history - food-stuffs were adulterated until governments stepped in with regulation; see https: [wikipedia.org]

    • Mistrust of major companies isn't new

      Nor is it misplaced. Once an organization grows big enough that the top doesn't know every employee by name it is susceptible to manipulation by a rogue actor. It's not a matter of if but when someone within a company abuses their position for personal gain. Where it becomes a huge problem is when it IS the top doing the abusing. All of the aforementioned companies have at one time had such a condition.

      • Eh, it doesn't even need to be manipulated by someone or done for personal gain to fuck people over. Companies that get large enough often are siloed and at the level where management meets across silos they don't have an operational knowledge of what's happening at the bottom of their silo. That leads to all sorts of issues like "it's nobody's job" and "it's more than one department's job" and as a customer or end user, navigating that can be brutally painful.

        Another issue is not understanding how one deci

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      they don't provide any benefit at all.

      People like the free services that are paid for by ads, that's the benefit they provide.

      I think people mostly accept this, what they don't accept is Facebook leaking their personal data to other companies or being a source of fake news.

      What's sad is that Google is actually one of the best. They have a massive amount of personal data to protect, and they haven't had a major breech. They don't sell that data to anyone else, they don't allow anyone else to access it without the explicit permission of the user.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

        But what kind of service do 'doubleclick' and company give me for free? Most people don't even know that they exist.

      • Google doesn't sell data to anyone? Really? Tell me again how YouTube or Google Maps makes money. Tell me again who Google doesn't sift through your email if you have a gmail account.

        Moron....

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Why would they sell their most valuable asset that only has value because no one else has it?

          They sell ads, not personal data.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Khyber ( 864651 )

            "They sell ads, not personal data."

            Bullshit. I can buy info right now that tells me when I was last getting into or leaving a vehicle. All collected and sold by GOOGLE through my Android phone. Collected even when I told it fucking not to. [theverge.com]

            Take your ass to a mental hospital, because it is clear that you do not reside in reality.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Show us where you can buy from Google some random person's info showing when they last entered or exited a vehicle.

      • People like the free services that are paid for by ads, that's the benefit they provide.

        Paid for by industrial scale cyber stalking is more accurate.

        what they don't accept is Facebook leaking their personal data to other companies

        Or stealing / collecting it in the first place. I don't recall ever signing up for Facebook or asking them to keep a record of every website I visit. They do these things on their own initiative by leveraging their monopoly position just like Google does. Good luck finding anyone who believes this constitutes acceptable behavior.

        being a source of fake news

        The day "I heard it on the Internet" (tm) ever becomes a phrase that is not mocked mercilessly is the day the Interne

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Khyber ( 864651 )

        "What's sad is that Google is actually one of the best. They have a massive amount of personal data to protect, and they haven't had a major breech."

        Mother fucking BULLSHIT. You can find so many old 0-days for gmail alone that it's guaranteed they've had major breaches and they're too fucking cowardly to admit it.

        Hell, I know of a persistent XSS vulnerability RIGHT NOW that they can't fucking fix.

        Take your ass back to school because it is clear you do not know what the fuck you are talking about.

    • Earlier the mistrust was for IBM and Microsoft. Then Oracle was added. And now Facebook and Google.

      Also realize that the list just grows, the only way to get off the list is a liquidation.

      99.9999% of consumers don't give a shit about privacy. That's painfully obvious given the lack of impact against the very organizations who abuse privacy the most.

      And that is also the reason the "list" is completely irrelevant, as is any concern of liquidation.

      • Would you like all your neighbors to know what porn you look at while you masturbate? How about your employer? I mean specific pictures, how often and long you looked at each. How about every comment you've ever made on a forum. How about private conversations you've had with friends, lovers, or coworkers. Everything you've ever purchased on the internet. Everything video you've rented/streamed. All of it available and searchable to all your family, neighbors, friends, and employer. Most people don'

        • Would you like all your neighbors to know what porn you look at while you masturbate? How about your employer? I mean specific pictures, how often and long you looked at each. How about every comment you've ever made on a forum. How about private conversations you've had with friends, lovers, or coworkers. Everything you've ever purchased on the internet. Everything video you've rented/streamed. All of it available and searchable to all your family, neighbors, friends, and employer. Most people don't consider this when they're told everything they're doing is logged. If this was explained to them, I think it's more likely that 99.999% do actually care about privacy and the .001% are just freaky exhibitionists who want their life on display.

          Damn near every example you've provided here are considered data points that would be very easy for any ISP to collect.

          And yet, how many consumers have EVER asked their ISP about any of the data collection issues you've presented? How many consumers even know what their ISP collects and/or sells about them? Yeah, I thought so. As I said before, people don't give a shit about privacy.

          And consumers are told all the damn time about data collecting; happens every time another data breach happens that showca

    • If you don't trust the corporate cancer and agree to love, honor, and obey the ToS, then you'll merely force them to take away your email address. Probably remove your birthday, too.

      Actually, I was looking for "funny" in this thread. The obvious jokes were something along the lines of "I caught the distrust virus" or "Too late, it got me!". Couldn't find anything along such lines. *sigh* Sadly typical for Slashdot these days.

      The corporate cancers are winning. Or maybe that should be past tense and we're jus

  • Good? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nitehawk214 ( 222219 ) on Monday July 09, 2018 @10:48AM (#56916562)

    I see no reason why any company holding any personal data should be trusted. They are the ones that resist any regulation of personal data. They are the ones that profit off of it.

    You have to earn trust. Since when has any company done that?

    • Re:Good? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09, 2018 @11:07AM (#56916722)

      Agreed. Look at how this CEO builds a strawman of "trusting our technology", when the real issue of trust concerns human beings. As if their own technology is out of their control and makes decisions, like stalking and recording people, with a mind of its own.

      • Additionally a CEO conflates "problem for my company" with "problem for all of society", as if anyone gives a shit about their company.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Good? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Attila Dimedici ( 1036002 ) on Monday July 09, 2018 @11:20AM (#56916846)
      Apparently you paid no attention to Zuckerberg's testimony before Congress, where he begged them to regulate social media companies...of course that was because he knows that government regulation always favors the larger company and usually favors the incumbent.

      • Yep, that is the basis of regulatory capture. Its the same reason Amazon is in favor of interstate sales tax.

    • I see no reason why any company holding any personal data should be trusted. They are the ones that resist any regulation of personal data. They are the ones that profit off of it.

      You have to earn trust. Since when has any company done that?

      Credit agencies, medical establishments, and banking to name a few. I highly doubt you personally know the CEOs that are currently responsible for some of your most personal and valued data, so I'd like to know exactly how they earned your trust.

      Also remember that trust goes both ways. Mark "Dumb Fucks" Zuckerberg already clarified exactly how we got here.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by swb ( 14022 )

        I don't trust any of them by choice.

        The credit agencies just exist, I have no choice but to deal with them if I don't want to live like Ted Kaczynski. In fact, I wager that the credit reporting agencies and there relentless scheming to use non-financial information in all-too-opaque credit scoring systems actually ends up raising borrowing costs for most people by adding some margin of "risk" to the credit scores unrelated to their historical performance as borrowers. Not only due I not trust them, I thin

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Credit agencies

        Trust Level - VERY LOW - I don't trust those guys at all as an individual. Now maybe some of their customers do, lenders employers who do credit checks etc but that is because they don't really care about false negatives. As an individual I have had my data leaked endangering my other accounts by two of the big three. I have had wrong information about someone else on my report that was VERY painful to get fixed on at least one.

        medical establishments

        BAHAHAHA Sorry I have done pen tests for a few big labs - terrible, leaking

    • You are not their customer. In fact, they don't care about you at all. You are a product. The GDPR is actually one of the few things that makes companies actually think twice, although many companies still don't really care.

  • Apathy (Score:4)

    by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Monday July 09, 2018 @10:51AM (#56916598)

    Apathy is already a contagion that has spread. No one care how much data google and facebook have on them. And they shrug shoulders when it falls into hands of unknown shadowy theives. And they even feel to unmotivated to quit google or facebook when that happens.

    Were all waiting for the shoe to drop and it never does. But we do see signs of things like voter manipulation or lots of hard to quantify privacy intrusions. Nothing you can really put a finger on. To hard to investigate.

    Hey that sounds like the perfect rationale for regulation of an industry by a central watchdog.

    • You're not wrong. Sadly, as is the case all too often with humans, it'll take a disasterous, crisis-level event for them to wake up and take notice, demand something be done, and by then it'll be too late, the proverbial horse will have already left the proverbial barn, and the only thing left to be done at that point is damage control and mopping up the mess left behind. Then there'll be Grand Gestures and Profound Statements by legislators and CEOs.. and when the News Cycle turns and everyone has forgotte
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Contagion? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by caution live frogs ( 1196367 ) on Monday July 09, 2018 @10:57AM (#56916648)

    Mistrust of the companies is not contagious. Abuse of user privacy by big companies IS contagious, apparently. If they don't want us to distrust them, they should start acting like trustworthy companies. You can't blame users when the root problem is shitty corporate policy.

    • If your kid is stealing cookies from the cookie jar even though (s)he knows they're not supposed to be doing that, and you ignore it and never enforce the rule, then eventually they'll get more and more brazen about it, figuring the rule has no teeth because it's not enforced, and over time they'll even start convincing themselves that the rule never applied to them, somehow, in the first place. So it is with these companies and corporations: At some point in the past they knew what they were doing was wron

  • "..., then that impacts anybody, whether you're a victim or enterprise."

    There, fixed that for you. It surprises me that companies are whining when they have tried so hard to be unworthy of any trust at all.

  • Allowing a few nations security services deep in networks while selling domestic "security" and "privacy" is why so many US brands are so far behind.

    Giving crypto to governments, it contractors and random staff to use as they want.
    Allowing governments deep into your crypto and code.
    Not having the staff skills to find governments and mil wondering around deep in your networks.

    Dont sell crypto thats junk as a security product and expect the world to then trust any US brand.
    Hire staff on merit with sk

  • Americans Distrust ANYTHING Powerful (Score:4, Insightful)

    by eepok ( 545733 ) on Monday July 09, 2018 @11:04AM (#56916702) Homepage

    Americans are a fearful people. We're literally taught to be fearful from childhood. Who in America hasn't had these sentiments slammed into their faces at some point in life?

    All politicians want to be tyrants.
    All neighbors are potential molesters.
    All automobile drivers are blind and malicious.
    Anyone will step on you to get ahead.
    We're constantly at risk of invasion, attack, or harm otherwise.
    Everybody wants what we want and they're willing to take it by force.

    Of COURSE Americans distrust massive rich corporations that have a plausible desire to exploit them. We've been told to expect it. And in some scenarios (oddly enough like the Facebook and Microsoft ones), we shouldn't actually trust the companies. Given that it is one of our most important principals to be secure in our person and papers (aka - personal information) and these companies are in prime place to access that personal information, we have to continually ensure that the tentative trust of customer/vendor is sufficiently earned.

    But never be surprised when Americans distrust a powerful person or organization. It's literally in our upbringing.

    • Americans are a fearful people.

      To an extent this is true. It certainly explains the success of the gun lobby. It also explains the desire (by some) for a border wall, much racism, and quite a lot of other features of our society. On the other hand we can be an incredibly brave and adventurous people too if properly motivated. We're complicated...

      Of COURSE Americans distrust massive rich corporations that have a plausible desire to exploit them.

      Except they do trust them. If they did not trust them then they wouldn't act the way they do. If you do not care enough to actually act on that mistrust then that is indistinguishable from

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by eepok ( 545733 )

        Great points, but do not conflate inaction with trust. Americans are taught to be distrustful, but they also absorb defeatism socially (more on this later) and are taught apathy is socially admirable... even enlightened.

        Currently, you can have the easiest life if you simply surrender to the idea that all these different organizations are going to acquire our data by some means. You won't have to mess with privacy settings, read EULAs, change what software you keep installed according to changes in TOCs or s

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Baki ( 72515 )

      But they don't mistrust them enough alas, and less so than the citizens of several other countries.

  • Seems like a good thing. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Monday July 09, 2018 @11:04AM (#56916706)

    Honestly, what makes anyone think that trusting a huge faceless corporation is good idea to start with?

  • "Mistrust of Google and Facebook is a 'Contagion' That Could Spread To Every Tech Company"

    Greed is a contagion that has spread to every capitalist company, but you sure as shit don't hear any shareholder bitching about profits, now do you?

    Funny how everyone is all up in arms about the moral and ethical values tech companies hold, right up until it affects revenue and stock price.

    Nothing will change, because Greed.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      I don't think greed is the answer here, or only indirectly. I think the answer is power. Adler wasn't totally wrong about people. But just like not everything is sex, not everything is power. But in *this* case I think power is more the answer than greed. And that's definitely not limited to capitalists.

  • indeed, these excessively rich "executives" are not your friends or neighbors, they're a gang of self-serving thugs and have so corrupted the marketplace and society that honest people can't make a reasonable living and in many cases can barely survive financially. Evidently excessive greed and arrogance is going to be our tower of babel.

    • Oh, for mod points..

      This has been going on forever, from before the days of the Robber Barons.

      Sarnoff from RCA would make Bill Gates and Zuckerberg seem like saints.

      Today we have Zuckerberg, the Walton family, the Koch brothers, and many more who are all about maximizing their wealth regardless of how many they screw over to make it happen. Jobs lost, entire industries demolished.. and what is yet to come.

      What's worse, those same people are hell-bent on shaping the country (world?) according to their views

  • Is there anybody out there that actually trusts Facebook (except the people who work for Facebook)? At this point, aren't people in the position where they don't trust (or even like, or enjoy) Facebook, but quitting it altogether isn't an appealing option either due to how integral that platform is to communications and their daily lives?

    Google and Apple are slightly different: I'm sure there are large numbers of people that do entirely trust (rightly or wrongly) Google and Apple.

  • Mistrust (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The "problem" is that the mistrust of the companies named in TFS is absolutely, totally, well-deserved.

  • Just think... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Monday July 09, 2018 @11:13AM (#56916796)

    Really. Just do it. Critical thinking is a good thing.

    The thing is, it's ALWAYS been possible to manipulate these sorts of platforms. Recall the results that Google used to return for "more evil than satan himself" and "miserable failure"? No? Fine... go ahead and Google for "Santorum". You'll still get more than a dozen mixtures of lube and fecal matter before you get to the actual stack of crap that used to be a senator. And this is nothing new to the internet. Howard Stern used to engage in the pastime of having his listeners prank call news stations with "reports" blaming everything from the death of John Kennedy Jr. to the bomb attack in the old WTC's parking garage on his producer: "ba ba booey". And none other than Dan Rather once got fooled by a fake report wrt/ George Bush #2's national guard service.

    The fact that media platforms can be manipulated and fooled doesn't make them inherently untrustworthy. It means that they're designed and operated by human beings. And humans are inherently prone to making mistakes; particularly when they're deliberately misled. That doesn't mean anyone should distrust legitimate and reputable media and run off into conspiracy theory and they're-out-to-get-me paranoia land. It means you should just check multiple sources and apply critical thinking skills to what you read and hear.

  • Computer Progress (Score:3)

    by Dallas May ( 4891515 ) on Monday July 09, 2018 @11:16AM (#56916812)

    First there were mainframes that offered lot's of power and high levels of privacy, but were limited in user access.

    Then there were Personal Computers that offered limited power, but wide user adoption and maintained privacy.

    Then there was the "Cloud" that offered virtually unlimited power AND wide user adoption but disregarded privacy.

    The future is going to be to go back to personal computers/servers that control data locally and privately but now can offer virtually unlimited power and connection.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Big brands have made crypto so bad that a typewriter, index cards and papers kept secure in an office filing cabinet look like innovative security.

    • Bring forth the age of "SELF HOSTED".

      This sort of thing has been possible since forever with the right know how. And just like Netflix brought Internet video to the masses, someone out there is going to get rich by making stuff people can plug in at home and have.... whatever services they want running.

      But it'll have to deal with server maintenance. It has to deal with networking. It has to be plug and play. And the "value add" of privacy isn't going to be what makes it mainstream.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      I take it you don't actually know any average users? For the average user PCs have pretty much unlimited power ever since we had gigahertz processors. "The cloud" solved the problem of backups and synchronization, if you lost your camera you lost your pictures. Today it's like your phone breaks, then take a new one and resync and it's all there, your contacts and notes and pictures and whatnot. You'll of course counter to say that one day your cloud provider will lose data. Well maybe he will but people wil

  • Already happening ... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The worst-case scenario for us is that Silicon Valley gets so far behind on these issues that we just can't be trusted as an industry

    Sorry, but multi-billion dollar tech companies, startups, and everything in between is consistently demonstrating their business model is to harvest far more information about people than they realise, and then make money from it.

    Yes, we distrust you, because we pretty much know you're doing the shady things you don't want people to know you're doing.

    The distrust is real, and

  • Really? An hour long podcast?
    If you don't want to install iTunes, or Spotify, use the Pocket Casts link and download the .mp3 from their website.
    I listened to the five minutes of seems to be an advertisement for his company and gave up.

  • It's unfortunate that apparently the silicon valley whiz kids can't seem to form a business plan without a) free-to-use products and b) selling information about the product's usage to others.

    One would hope (in vain) that people would see the destructive effects of this model on the foundations of democratic government (think fake news influencing elections) and shun FB, MS and the rest. They have earned and richly deserve our mistrust, if not imprisonment.

  • Its funny how so many american get angry when the government tries to tell them what to do. Those same americans take any amount of crap off of some corporation and say "well thats the contract". Americans love to get told what to do by non governmental organizations. We have even given them the right to bribe/lobby for more 'rights' to do it. But at least we aren't giving decent healthcare to the masses.

  • The best approach is to slowly entangle the resource (human consumers of your platform) until they can't conceive of living without it. i.e. boiling the frog by raising the temperature slowly. Once the general population considers participation in a social media & cloud computing framework a sign of normality and lack of participation a sign of criminal deviance, then success is assured. Once upon a time, there was a great outcry about the mass of data collected by credit agencies on ordinary people;
  • consumers love what they think is free stuff - gmail, facebook, etc. they ignore the fact that google and facebook have to make money somehow and that's by selling the data they collect. doh.

  • While I'd appreciate some kind of "common requirements" regarding privacy - this is simply a matter of owning the problem. If Gov't has to regulate it becomes more difficult to operate as a free business. If Silicon Valley doesn't own the problem - then we won't trust them because it isn't their problem.

    I signed up with Disqus and they have this whole "you promise to keep your password secret, only use the platform for appropriate purposes, and allow us to share/do X,Y,Z to you, bend over...blah blah" in

  • Google, Zuckerbook, and others have abused and broken the trust of their users over and over and over again and you bastards are actually surprised and upset that no one trusts you anymore!? Seriously!?

    MEMO TO TECH COMPANIES, ALL OVER THE WORLD: You motherfuckers want people to trust you? Then you have to EARN THEIR TRUST by displaying a consistent pattern of TRUSTWORTHYNESS over a long, long period of time -- and I don't mean the typical "Fool the idiots into BELIEVING they can trust us by making some

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by x0 ( 32926 )

      STOP MAKING PEOPLE AND THEIR PRIVATE DATA YOUR 'PRODUCT'. Just fucking STOP.

      So, basically, you want them all to stop deploying the very business model that makes them money? I'm certain they'll get right on that...



      m

      • Maybe if we bring back our old friend The Guillotine they'll get the message: Stop being assholes and exploiting us for profit, or your head will end up in a basket. I'm only half kidding by the way. I'm so fucking sick and tired of people sticking their noses in my business that I'd punch them in the face repeatedly until it looked like bloody hamburger, if I could get my hands on them.

  • And I don't even use Box. Not like they'd have my trust to begin with - I have never trusted any of these companies other than the (very few) which have *earned* my trust. The fact the CEO of Box is such a f*ing idiot he would assume users just come in to a new platform completely trusting is as laughable as it is horrifying.

    • I don't even use Box. Not like they'd have my trust to begin with

      Depends on what you wanted to use Box, or Dropbox, or Google+, or.. whatever, for.

      In the case of Box, I posted up things that I specifically want to be distributed to anyone who might be interested - resume, some classic statistics charts, and so on.
      When I have stuff I don't want distributed to the known galaxy, I send it direct to the intended recipient. Of course, once I do that, I"m still at the mercy of said recipient -- and all of us always have been, ever since people learned how to copy things.

    • ...The fact the CEO of Box is such a f*ing idiot he would assume users just come in to a new platform completely trusting is as laughable as it is horrifying.

      Speaking of laughable, care to tell me why you assume otherwise?

      Here's a list of the resources it takes to convince hundreds of millions of people to sign up for [social media flavor/free service of the month]:

      1.

      2.

      3.

      That list also includes everyone who cares enough about data privacy or security to actually read a EULA.

  • Treat your users, customers and workers like people, not like assets or products, treat them like partners instead of cash cows, and you'll notice that they'll actually WANT to do business with you again.

    What goes around comes around.

  • It Isn't Just The Companies Themselves... (Score:3)

    by ytene ( 4376651 ) on Monday July 09, 2018 @02:23PM (#56918134)
    Unfortunately, it would be dangerous and misguided to consider this question solely from the perspective of "Can you trust Facebook?" or "Can you trust Google?"

    The reason for this is simply because of the legislative framework under which any company incorporated in the United States [and similar controls apply in other countries - this is by no means a US-centric issue] are legally obliged to operate.

    For example, the US Government can issue an "NSL" - National Security Letter to any US Company and that company is legally obliged to cooperate and legally prohibited from even admitting that they have received such an NSL. In the UK the equivalent notification is the "D-Notice", and disclosure of being under the direction of a D-Notice can be considered a breach of the Official Secrets Act, which carries some very strong punishments indeed.

    The second reason that it is important to understand context concerns what we already know.

    Disclosures from Edward Snowden have taught us that:-

    1. Physical modifications have in the past been made to equipment from Cisco systems between that equipment being released by the factory and arriving with the client.

    2. Systems have been compromised by specially-made USB cables, which included micro-transmitters that gave access to agents operating using a "remote control device" the size of a briefcase, from a range of up to 8km.

    3. etc...



    Does this suddenly mean that all (US/UK/Australian/Canadian/New Zealand) companies are suddenly to be considered untrustworthy? No, of course not. It just means that you have to walk into business relationships with all parties [no matter the country of origin] with your eyes open.

    Aaron Levine is right to be concerned, but the issue isn't "Google" or "Facebook" alone, it is the fact that any company to whom you give data can be compelled to give up that data to the government under which that company is incorporated. And from the perspective of the government in question, it is far cheaper to get some commercial entity to do all the hard work, then subpoena it for next-to-nothing, than it is to spend a fortune attempting direct connection...

  • if they didn't do all these things to earn our mistrust, then we would still trust them.
    but no, instead they all seem to make the same mistakes and do the same horrible things.

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