Every provider will have security issues occasionally. Including digital ocean:

http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/02/digitalocean-fixes-securit...

Not every provider lies to their customers about the hacks though. Linode only came forward about the hacks after I announced them on their IRC.

Having data scrubbing disabled by default is different than two breaches that exposed customer data in a short while, though.

Perhaps, perhaps not. You could argue that choosing not to enable data scrubbing was a deliberate decision by DO to place cost savings (simpler / less costly not to scrub SSDs and saves cell wearing) over security, wheras linode was just the victim of a targeted attack and were unlucky but are overall more competent. Or perhaps not.

In short, unless you have inside information, there is not enough information to determine which company is more competent or more trustworthy - it's not possible to judge which company you should trust with your business based on the available facts in an objective way currently, as the available data is easily attributable to simple bad luck.

In contrast, the performance difference is objectively measurable: http://joshtronic.com/2014/06/22/ten-dollar-showdown-linode-...

I do have some third-hand insider information that implies that Linode's management/billing/etc systems are old and buggy, which colors my judgement.

Regardless, I don't see how you can judge someone who's had at least two breaches more competent than someone who had zero. In all probability, DO didn't have any breaches precisely because they are more competent.

Two? You're completely ignoring the bitcoin hacks.