Product Rating Criteria
There's a lot of ways to look at rating a product or service. At Technology Advocates we look at products from a position of how they respect their customer, then we examine the suitability of the product itself. No matter how good a product is, no matter how feature rich it is, or how pretty it looks; if the product is primarily bait to harvest personal information from the customer we see that as a deal breaker. In such cases there is no way to ascertain true cost of ownership to the individual or society as a whole, because the product just keeps taking.
On this page is listed the criteria by which we measure a product for it's suitability of use with a focus on the trustworthiness of the company based on the respect they give their customers information. There are a few things you should know about this criteria:
- This criteria is a work in progress. That's not to say it is incomplete. It will always be a work in progress, evolving to meet the changing world and using input from the community around this site.
- The scoring list here by category feeds an algorithm applied to each product. This algorithm to will change and evolve over time for the same reasons as the criteria itself.
- There is no commercial bias in applying these scores. We accept no payment from vendors to boost scores. Should the day come that a vendor were to donate or in some way be affiliated with the advocacy it would be with the clearly stated understanding that such involvement would in no way impact how they are scored.
- We will provide companies assistance in understanding how to better their score through improving their practices. We may even receive compensation for this assistance. This isn't bias, it's being compensated for our efforts to make the on-line world a better place.
- In the end, we intend to keep this criteria and the associated algorithm as meaningful to its purpose as possible, while at the same time keeping it as straight forward and understandable as possible.
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| Invasiveness | This is an indicator of how much effort a vendor is making to coerce the customer indirectly. |
| Privacy Policy | The privacy policy is an obvious source of information by which to determine the trustworhtiness of a company. |
| Business Model | How company is structured has a great deal to do with it susceptability to behavior undermining the interests of the customer. |
| Affiliations | These days companies are judging customers and potential customers by the company they keep on the Internet. It makes sense for the customer to do the same regarding the company. |
| Integrity | A summary rating affecting the overall score based on the companies overall attitude regarding respecting the customer and their privacy in general. |
| Recommendation | The "Total Score" is the best attempt at creating an onjective score by which all products can be equally compared. This recommendation value is entirely subjective based on reviewer impressions and does not impact the product scoring. |