The 2018 Index ranks 22 internet, mobile, and telecommunications companies on their public commitments and disclosed policies affecting users’ freedom of expression and privacy. For each company, we selected up to four services to evaluate. For telecommunications companies, we evaluate pre- and post-paid mobile, and in most cases (when offered by the company) fixed-line broadband services. For internet and mobile companies, we evaluate up to four of the following types of service depending on what the company offers: cloud, mail, messaging and VoIP, mobile ecosystems, search engines, and social networking and blog platforms. Read more about the methodology development, research process and how we score each company.

To see how each service performed in comparison with those of other companies, click on a service category:

Services

  • Cloud service
    iCloud [Apple] Baidu Cloud [Baidu] Yandex Disk [Yandex]
  • Email service
    Gmail [Google] Daum Mail [Kakao] Mail.Ru email [Mail.Ru] Outlook.com [Microsoft] Yahoo Mail [Yahoo] Yandex Mail [Yandex]
  • Fixed broadband
    Vodafone UK [Vodafone] Movistar [Telefónica] Orange France [Orange] Ooredoo Qatar [Ooredoo] Etisalat UAE [Etisalat] Airtel India [Bharti Airtel] AT&T [AT&T]
  • Messaging & VoIP
    Skype [Microsoft] Messenger [Facebook] WhatsApp [Facebook] Kakao Talk [Kakao] Mail.Ru Agent [Mail.Ru] WeChat [Tencent] QQ [Tencent] iMessage [Apple]
  • Mobile ecosystems
    Android mobile ecosystem [Google] iOS mobile ecosystem [Apple] Samsung implementation of Android [Samsung]
  • Pre-and post-paid mobile
    Telcel [América Móvil] AT&T [AT&T] Celcom [Axiata] Airtel India [Bharti Airtel] Etisalat UAE [Etisalat] MTN SA [MTN] Ooredoo Qatar [Ooredoo] Orange France [Orange] Movistar [Telefónica] Vodafone UK [Vodafone]
  • Search engine
    Yandex Search [Yandex] Bing [Microsoft] Daum Search [Kakao] Google Search [Google] Baidu Search [Baidu]
  • Social networking & blog
    Twitter [Twitter] Tumblr [Yahoo] Facebook [Facebook] Vkontakte [Mail.Ru] QZone [Tencent] Baidu Postbar [Baidu]
  • Video & photo sharing
    Flickr [Yahoo] Periscope [Twitter] Instagram [Facebook] YouTube [Google]