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Google Accused of Tracking School Kids After Promising Not To (cio.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the hand-in-the-cookie-jar dept.

itwbennett writes: In a complaint (PDF) filed Tuesday with the Federal Trade Commission, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) claims that "despite publicly promising not to, Google mines students' browsing data and other information, and uses it for the company's own purposes." The EFF says Google's practice of recording everything students do while they're logged into their Google accounts, regardless of the device or browser they're using, puts the company in breach of Section 5 of the Federal Communications Act.

7 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. i know i wasn't supposed to read TFA, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Breach of protocol there, sorry, but I read TFA.

    This part seems kinda disturbing:

    some schools require students to use Chromebooks

    Why in the hell are schools requiring students to use Chromebooks? We're making people do business and give their personal deals to advertisers now? What's next, requiring Facebook?

    This also does something much more subtle but very harmful to our society: it gets kids used to the world where nothing they "own" is really theirs, where everything they do is subject to the whims of someone else. Control over their computing devices is held by a multinational, whether Google or Apple or whoever. Instead, we should be getting kids used to freedom, both the power and the responsibility that comes with it.

    1. Re:i know i wasn't supposed to read TFA, but... by Dzimas · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why in the hell are schools requiring students to use Chromebooks? We're making people do business and give their personal deals to advertisers now? What's next, requiring Facebook?

      Schools standardize on a single platform to make support simpler and to make sure that tools are available on every machine in the classroom. Typically, that means a computer cart loaded with several dozen laptops of some kind. Chromebooks have a distinct advantage for cash-strapped school boards in that they cost about $200 each, compared to five times as much for a cart filled with Macbook Airs. Chromebooks boot in well under 10 seconds, have batteries that will last a full school day, don't require complicated software installation and are immune to common PC viruses and trojans. Kids can use Sheets, Slides and Docs to create and edit school work without the school board having to pay significant licensing fees for an office suite. They save schools a fortune.

      At the end of the day, Microsoft and Apple also track and data mine their users. The core problem isn't that the Big Bad Google is data mining school kids, it's that everyone is doing it. And that needs to stop.

    2. Re:i know i wasn't supposed to read TFA, but... by Cro+Magnon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They are Linux in the same way that my Tivo is Linux. They might have the same kernel, but they don't have the "spirit" of Linux.

      --
      Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
    3. Re:i know i wasn't supposed to read TFA, but... by Pumpkin+Tuna · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sounds great! Are you going to come to my school district and help me teach the teachers and kids to do all of that? Are you going to help my network guys keep a network secure in which every kid is given the freedom tinker and hack into everything? Are you going to do all that work for free? Are you bringing friends? Look, I agree that we need more computer literate individuals, but we don't have that now and we don't have the money to do it. I would rather be able to give kids a cheap device they can use to do lots of cool, creative things and access a pretty good variety of materials on a network that stays safe and doesn't crash all the time. As the poster above said. Google and all the others need to improve their privacy, but for now, it's a trade off we in education have to live with.

  2. Re:No expectation of privacy on school systems by wbr1 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    They did agree to this. However, is there evidence of them violating any of these statements? Sure they are collecting data. That could be used in violation and it could be used to better provide service.

    If they are in violation, then fine, be pissed. But data collection does not imply use for unauthorized purposes. I collect phone and address data on my customers. I do not use it to stalk them.

    --
    Silence is a state of mime.
  3. How about ACTUAL books by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    With ipads and chromebooks everywhere, why aren't kids getting any smarter?

  4. accusations without any evidence by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 4, Insightful

    EFF found that Google’s “Sync” feature for the Chrome browser is enabled by default on Chromebooks sold to schools. This allows Google to track, store on its servers, and data mine for [...] Despite publicly promising not to, Google mines students’ browsing data and other information, and uses it for the company’s own purposes

    Google syncs student data to their servers, including web searches, because Chromebooks back up everything to the cloud. If you back up your Windows machine to the cloud, you back up your search history as well. Nothing in the EFF's press release suggests that they have shown that Google does anything more than this, let alone "mines" that data or "uses it for the company's own purposes".