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  1. 1.1 Index categories
  2. 1.2 Company types
  3. 1.3 What the index measures
  4. 1.4 Evaluation and scoring
  1. 3.1 The 2018 Index ranking
  2. 3.2 Notable changes
  3. 3.3 Governance advances and gaps
  4. 3.4 Spotlight: Human rights impact assessments
  5. 3.5 Regulatory factors
  6. 3.6 Recommendations for companies
  1. 4.1 Disclosure failure
  2. 4.2 Handling of data breaches
  3. 4.3 Security oversight
  4. 4.4 Identifying and addressing vulnerabilities
  5. 4.5 Spotlight: “Bug bounties” and reporting vulnerabilities
  6. 4.6 Recommendations for companies
  1. 5.1 Transparency remains inadequate
  2. 5.2 What, whom, and why?
  3. 5.3 Targeted advertising and lack of user control
  4. 5.4 Tracking users
  5. 5.5 Recommendations for companies
  1. 6.1 Transparency and accountability
  2. 6.2 Terms of service enforcement
  3. 6.3 External requests to restrict content and accounts
  4. 6.4 Recommendations for companies
  1. 7.1 Chokepoints for global information flows
  2. 7.2 Network shutdowns
  3. 7.3 Policing access to information
  4. 7.4 Privacy problems: surveillance and data protection
  5. 7.5 Recommendations for companies
  1. 11.1 Methodology development
  2. 11.2 Company selection
  3. 11.3 Selection of services
  4. 11.4 Levels of disclosure
  5. 11.5 Research process and steps
  6. 11.6 Company engagement
  7. 11.7 Scoring
  8. 11.8 For more information
  9. 11.9 List of charts and tables

Acknowledgments

Ranking Digital Rights (RDR) staff:

Rebecca MacKinnon, Director Amy Brouillette, Senior Research and Editorial Manager Lisa Gutermuth, Senior Program Manager Laura Reed, Senior Research Analyst and Coordinator Andrea Hackl, Research Analyst Ilana Ullman, Policy and Communications Analyst Afef Abrougui, Corporate Accountability Editor

We wish to thank Nat Meysenburg at Open Technology Institute for his input on the 2018 Index methodology. We also wish to acknowledge former Ranking Digital Rights team members for their work in developing the 2015 and 2017 Index methodologies: Priya Kumar, Research Analyst; Allon Bar, Policy and Engagement Manager; Nathalie Maréchal, Senior Research Fellow; Revati Prasad, PhD candidate, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Contributing researchers:

Shazeda Ahmed, Amanda Alemán Angelini, Opeyemi Akanbi, Riyadh Al-Balushi, Joan Barata, Alex Comninos, Luis Fernando García Muñoz, Elonnai Hickok, Sergei Hovyadinov, Kelly Kim, Shabina S. Khatri, Danielle Kehl, Priya Kumar, Tetyana Lokot, Carly Nyst, Gisela Pérez de Acha, Léa Richard, Tatevik Sargsyan, Mariam Al Shafie, Mingli Shi, Jiwon Son, Ann Spanger, Hu Yong, Joseph Yoo, Benjamin Zhou.

Design and layout: Alison Yost, Director of Strategic Communications and Outreach, New America’s Open Technology Institute.

Graphics: Olivia Solis, SHARE Lab.

Advisory Council: We are also grateful for the support and advice of our advisory council members, listed at https://rankingdigitalrights.org/who/advisory-council/.

Special thanks: Matt Barg, Sustainalytics; Chris Ritzo, Senior Technologist at Open Technology Institute. Thanks also to Melissa Brown, Dipayan Ghosh, Priya Kumar, Bennett Freeman, Nathalie Maréchal, Carly Nyst, Tatevik Sargsyan, Liz Woolery and Andi Wilson for providing valuable feedback about this report.

Funders The 2018 Corporate Accountability Index was supported by the following funders:

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation • Ford Foundation • Open Society Foundations • U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

For a full list of current and former project funders and partners, please see https://rankingdigitalrights.org/who/partners/.

About Ranking Digital Rights

Ranking Digital Rights is a non-profit research initiative housed at the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute. We work with an international network of partners to set global standards for how companies in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector should respect freedom of expression and privacy.

For more about Ranking Digital Rights and the Corporate Accountability Index, please visit www.rankingdigitalrights.org.

For more about New America, please visit https://www.newamerica.org.

For more about the Open Technology Institute, please visit https://www.newamerica.org/oti.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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