[rukuu001]

Never mind the list of companies - I'd be very curious to know what the 'trust signals' are that would help you trust a company?

[amelius]

For hardware, I'd only trust a company if they didn't also have an interest in data. In fact, I'd trust a hardware company more if they didn't also have a big software division.

A company like AMD I would trust more than a company like Apple.

[jacquesm]

Decent management. A lack of change of business model, no rug pulls and such. Fair value for money. Consistency over the longer term. No lock in or other forced relationships. Large enough to be useful and to have decent team size, small enough to not have the illusion they'll conquer the world. Healthy competition.

[NBJack]

Admirable, but short of a local credit union I used to use (which I am no longer with as they f'd up a rather critical transaction), I can scarcely imagine a business that fits such a model these days. The amount of transparency needed to vet this would be interesting to find though, and its mere presence probably a green flag.

[lovich]

Are there any companies existing you would trust?

I honestly can’t name a single one I know of who could pass that criteria

Edit:found your other comment answering a similar question

[nikcub]

the way they respond to security and privacy incidents + publishing technical security + privacy papers / docs

[PlatoIsADisease]

Apple = Run more commercials with black backgrounds and white text that says

SECURITY

PRIVACY

---

Heyyy it never said "good privacy" perceive as you want...

Don't publicly acknowledge that you were the reason someone got murdered and 1000 VIPs got hacked.

One day when I'm deemed a 'Baddie', I looked at Apple as inspiration.

[jacquesm]

Good one, yes, that is important.

[belter]

And do they approach Security as a Feature or as a Process. The fingers on one hand are enough to count them...

[elxr]

No past history of shady planned-obsolescence sprinkled in a bunch of their products, for one.

So that rules out Apple.

A leadership team that is very open and involved with the community, and one that takes extra steps, compared to competitors, to show they take privacy seriously.

[selectodude]

Planned obsolescence tells me they don't make money on the daily use of their software and they need me to buy more hardware in order to make money.

[8note]

I'd go for a co-operative ownership model rather than capitalist?

and make sure the member/owners are all of like mind, and willing to pay more to ensure security and privacy

[YetAnotherNick]

Co-operative will have significantly worse privacy guarantee compared to shareholder based model. In the no one company wants to sacrifice on privacy standard just for the sake of it. They do it for money. And in shareholder based model, the employees are more likely to go against the shareholder when user privacy is involved, because they are not directly benefiting from it.

[jacquesm]

Mondragon for IT... it's been my dream for decades.