Who do you trust with your data?

Thanks to the cloud, there’s basically no reason to lose important data ever again. Photos, phone numbers, videos, music – not only can you now store it out there in the ether but, in doing so, you open it up to a whole new world of possibilities, collaboration and accessibility.

But on the flipside, it feels like privacy concerns have never been higher around all this data.

So, unless you want to drastically compromise what you can do with those digital assets, you face a choice – which provider do you trust the most with your data? And how do you decide?

How do you decide who to trust?

It comes down to three things:

1. What’s their public privacy policy?

2. In contrast to that, what have their recent actions been?

3. How easily could you escape the service?

My league of tech trust

So I decided to put together my own personal line up:

1. Google
2. Microsoft
3. Amazon

See anyone missing? Yeah, a couple of notable ones.

The companies I just don’t trust:

• Apple
• Facebook

My decisions in this case are based on more than just who I’d trust with my data – for me, it’s also based on the recent behaviour that shows whether they understand a theory of mine: that you can make more money by not being evil than by just doing whatever you want.

But I bet my list is the near polar opposite of most people on the street.

What’s your list? How do you order your judgement in this area?