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Google Accused of Tracking School Kids After Promising Not To (cio.com)
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.
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.
You should also take a damn close look at Android 6 privacy features. The new feature that lets users turn off rights to GPS, camera etc. for apps after installation.
On the face of it it sounds good, but the way they've done it is absolutely the opposite:
It lets an app install first, then demand priviledges as it goes along. It *tells* the app you are refusing it access to the camera or mic or address book, or location, or SMS's etc. So the app can slowly sucker you in Facebook style demanding more and more privileges to run as it has more and more leverage over you. You mid conversation a messaging app can demand access to your address book to let you finish the conversation, and Google's Android 6 will tell it if you refuse.
Google Player Services, aka Google's spyware* gets a free ride and its spyware can't be turned off. This service tracks location and even if you disable all Google services they continue to get the information. That is just the tip of the iceberg as to what that tracks.
Other similar features in other Android distributions, return empty data to the app, so it might demand access to the camera, but the camera data it gets is a noise image, and it might demand your address book, but it gets an empty address book instead if you refuse it access. So the app cannot know it has been refused access to the data and cannot leverage that to force you to give it access.
* Seriously take a good look at what that 'play' store is sending to Google, it helps itself to everything, and requests location even when the phone is on standby.
They are a privacy disaster and where the fook are the regulator?
There's probably an algorithm for projected income from the mined data versus likely fines for breach of conduct.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Nah I bet it is a simple algorithm.
In order to determine if they are a minor or not, they determine if they are viewing porn or not. If they are viewing porn then they must not be a minor thus open to tracking data.
Easy algorithm.
Because kids are only exposed or search for it after they reach 18 years of age.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
Perhaps you should read the claim more closely. Google *agreed* not to spy on students (and yes I did use the word spy because that is what they're doing). This formed part of the basis for which Schools used their services. Since schools have a legal obligation to keep private student data private, this was essential to them.
Yet Google doesn't honor that agreement, and thus exposes the schools to legal consequence:
"Google’s practices fly in the face of commitments made when it signed the Student Privacy Pledge, a legally enforceable document whereby companies promise to refrain from collecting, using, or sharing students’ personal information except when needed for legitimate educational purposes or if parents provide permission."
"EFF’s filing with the FTC also reveals that the administrative settings Google provides to schools allow student personal information to be shared with third-party websites in violation of the Student Privacy Pledge. The ability to collect and potentially share student information follows children whenever they use Chrome to log into their Google accounts, whether on a parents’ Apple iPad, friend’s smartphone or home computer."
"EFF's cloud "sync" argument isn't too solid. Google's system of syncing data between devices is the entire point of Google Apps and their Chrome OS system"
No, its an OPTIONAL feature that is turned on by default for School Chromebooks. Sure this might be the point of Chrome from Google's perspective (gaining market advantage by having access to private data), but that does not make it the schools entire purpose!
With ipads and chromebooks everywhere, why aren't kids getting any smarter?
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Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
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".