Sonic Blog

2013 Transparency Report

Protection of customer privacy is one of our core values at Sonic.net. We seek to provide as much transparency as possible regarding legal processes and customer privacy, so in furtherance of those efforts, we are releasing our third annual Transparency Report.

This year we saw far fewer civil subpoenas than 2012, with just one in 2013 compared with nine each in 2011 and 2012. Law enforcement subpoena activity increased in 2013, but Sonic.net’s membership is also increasing so it is challenging to make a direct comparison between the years. One DMCA content takedown notice was received and complied with. (Content takedowns are less common for Sonic.net because we primarily provide Internet access, and hosting is not a very large part of our business.)

We have also made one update to our Sonic.net Legal Process Policy document. The update makes clearer our policies by replacing “criminal subpoena” with “criminal legal process” in order to assure that we cover all possible forms of legal process.

Finally, we have now begun tracking law enforcement orders which are subsequently withdrawn before customer information is provided. We expect to release information in our 2014 report which includes more details about these situations.

Internet and telephone service providers have a great responsibility both to protect their law-abiding customers and the public. We continually work to achieve both of these goals.