Caught in a potentially shady situation, Gogo’s crisis management doesn’t hold up
In-flight Internet provider Gogo was caught in a major no-no this week when a traveling Google engineer disovered it was issuing faked SSL certificates for YouTube. SSL certificates are part of the technology that is supposed to ensure secure communication over the Internet, and by compromising them Gogo could be granting itself access to the private information of users of its service.
hey @Gogo, why are you issuing *.google.com certificates on your planes? pic.twitter.com/UmpIQ2pDaU
— Adrienne Porter Felt (@__apf__) January 2, 2015
In response, Gogo issued a statement that, as so many corporate apologies often do, was utterly lacking in compassion for concerned stakeholders:
Below is a statement from Anand Chari, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Gogo regarding our streaming video policy:
“Gogo takes our customers privacy very seriously and we are committed to bringing the best internet experience to the sky. Right now, Gogo is working on many ways to bring more bandwidth to an aircraft. Until then, we have stated that we don’t support various streaming video sites and utilize several techniques to limit/block video streaming. One of the recent off-the-shelf solutions that we use proxies secure video traffic to block it. Whatever technique we use to shape bandwidth, It impacts only some secure video streaming sites and does not affect general secure internet traffic. These techniques are used to assure that everyone who wants to access the Internet on a Gogo equipped plane will have a consistent browsing experience.
We can assure customers that no user information is being collected when any of these techniques are being used. They are simply ways of making sure all passengers who want to access the Internet in flight have a good experience.”
Not only was this response lacking in compassion, but it also completely ignored the issue that has many people swearing to never use the service. As critics have pointed out, assuring users that none of their information is being collected is not the same as not being able to at will.
Perception is reality when it comes to business these days. Our crisis management advice would have been to show an alternative solution was being implemented, but by relying on a lack of tech knowledge and foundationless trust Gogo is playing a dangerous game.
The BCM Blogging Team
https://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com