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Habr takes first place in the ranking of digital rights of users

Hello! In touch RosKomSvoboda! We want to share good news with you. We have released the study "Digital Rights Compliance Rating by Popular Runet Web Services - 2020". And Habr (as is already clear from the title) took first place in this rating, ahead of companies such as Yandex, VKontakte, HeadHunter and others. We tell that we investigated , on the basis of what data and how Habr became a leader.

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The study was based on the Ranking Digital Rights methodology
RDR — ; .

We modernized it a bit, took into account the Russian realities and got 4 categories of parameters into which the questions of concern to us were grouped:

  • Transparency
  • Consumer rights
  • Privacy
  • Freedom of information

The study analyzed the activities of 11 major companies: VKontakte (VK), Sberbank, Yandex, Mail.Ru, Odnoklassniki, Rambler, Ozon, Avito, Head Hunter (hh.ru), Wildberries, Habr.

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The process itself consisted of the following steps:

  1. The first expert conducts an inventory of publicly available documents for each of the services.
  2. Setting the score for each indicator by the first expert.
  3. Validation of the results by the second and third expert.
  4. Request additional information from the companies themselves.
  5. “Horizontal verification”: comparing the results of companies among themselves in order to comply with a unified and objective approach.

As a result of the answer to each question of the company, one of the results was assigned:

  • «1» () — , /
  • «0,5» () — , ,
  • «0» () — , , ,

After determining the result for each of the questions of each indicator, a general scoring was made.

More details on the research methodology can be found here . 



We now consider each category separately.

Transparency




Here, RosKomSvobody experts took into account the company's commitment to respecting human rights to privacy and freedom of information, the openness of companies in cooperation with the media and government agencies, the availability of information on the procedure for responding to requests from government agencies for user information, etc. You can find the full list of issues in methodology.

Immediately, we note that the study used exclusively public documents, which can be accessed by absolutely any network user. If any information available to companies was not taken into account in this study, it means we did not find it, but you hid it well :)



In total, 9 questions were considered in transparency, for each of which companies could receive a maximum of 1 point, that is, only 9 points or 100%.

For three companies (Avito, HeadHunter and Wildberries), experts were unable to find any information, indicating their maximum closeness. They got 0 in this category.

Yandex, Rambler, Mail and Ozon scored 0.5 points and their level of transparency was rated at 5.56%.

I was pleasantly surprised by Vkontakte, which, along with Habr, disputes unlawful requests of state bodies.

Of all the companies studied, only Habr excelled in publishing a transparency report .

Habr also became the only company to disclose the number of requests from law enforcement agencies, despite the fact that such requests are regularly received by all the companies studied.

Consumer rights




Here, questions were discussed about the availability of the user agreement and the ease of presenting information in it, as well as the availability of a support service and the quality of its work at the web service. Only 3 questions.

Regarding the availability and accessibility of the user agreement, Sberbank and Ozone received "0" points, but in evaluating the work of the support service, all companies showed good results. Avito and Habr scored 2.5 points each as absolute leaders in this section: companies strive for full understanding with their users. The minimum result was shown by Sberbank, gaining only 1 point for having a round-the-clock support service and for a prompt and comprehensive answer to our question.

Privacy




Assessing the privacy of RosKomSvoboda, it took into account issues related to the privacy policy and the collection of user data, as well as the possibility of anonymous use of the service. Only 10 questions, including the availability of information about the storage periods of user data and the ability for the user to control the use of their data for targeted advertising.

The last distinguished MailRu, Yandex and Rambler, which really provide such an opportunity.

Yandex was the only company that maintains a register of changes to the Privacy Policy, Habr and Rambler contain links to previous versions.

Yandex won 80% in the “privacy” category (8 points out of 10 possible). Only Yandex deletes user information after terminating use of the service.

The second place with an assessment of 60% was shared by Habr and VK. Only VK provides a personal service for uploading user data collected by the company, but Habr is the only one that enables the anonymous use of the resource.

Freedom of information




Here we are talking about the openness of companies in relation to requests for restricting access from state bodies or individuals to sites or pages, the frequency of such requests, as well as the decision-making procedure. The maximum possible score is 6. The

absolute leader in “freedom of information”, as expected, was Habr.

Of the 11 companies, only Habr publishes information on the number of requirements to restrict access to information by government bodies and individuals. One similar publication was also found in Yandex, but it dates from 2016 and it compiles statistics on requests within the framework of the “Oblivion Law”.

Habr also distinguished himself in the fact that only he carries out legal verification of requirements for restricting access to information from government bodies before their execution.



In order to study an acceptable level of transparency and compliance with standards for protecting digital rights of users, a value exceeding 50% of all indicators was adopted. Only Habr was able to show such a result, gaining 57%. Of the four indicators evaluated, Habr took first place in three of them, which indicates the openness of the company and the digital rights of its users.

RosKomSvoboda spoke with Habr about how to be number 1 in our rating.

Head of User Relations Alexey Shevelev (Boomburum) comments on the success of the company and the study itself:

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We, in turn, want to note that as part of the preparation of the study, we sent out results to all companies and asked for comments on them. We did not wait for answers, although we are sure that the companies had something to add and, possibly, challenge. To be honest with all the companies under study, in this case we did not use personal contacts to draw the attention of top management to our requests.

Alexey continues:
“In the future, we plan to expand our report, for which we’ve redesigned the mechanisms for working with the site’s static information (help sections, reports, documentation for authors and companies, etc.) in the site’s admin panel — it used to take a lot of time, now it’s all corrected can be paid in a couple of minutes. Accordingly, the request report is edited day-to-day.

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Together with Habr, RosKomSvoboda urges companies not to be shy to be open and disclose information about their activities that are directly related to user data and affect digital rights. Pikabu has already taken off, for example, becoming the second after Habr to publish the Transparency Report in Russia.

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