Sen. Franken asks Google to address concerns about Chromebooks, Google Apps collecting student data
U.S. Senator Al Franken has sent a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, asking his company to describe what it's doing with the private data of students who use Chromebooks and/or Google Apps for Education.
The letter addresses concerns that Google may be collecting data about students for non-educational purposes without gaining consent from parents. The company has been asked to respond by Feb. 12.
Franken is the chief Democrat in the U.S. Senate's Privacy, Technology and the Law Subcommittee, and regularly sends such letters to tech companies whenver a serious legal issue comes in front of the public eye.
In this case, the Electronic Frontier Foundation recently filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, accusing Google of violating its commitment to the Student Privacy Pledge, which asks that companies not collect, use, or share student data except when it's needed for educational purposes, or if parents consent.
While Google doesn't use the data for targeted ads within its own sites, the version of Chrome on Chromebooks is still set to sync by default, giving the company access to browser history, search requests, and more. Google has promised to disable sync with other Google services for educational Chromebooks, but the EFF claims this doesn't go far enough, and that the adminstrative settings Google provides to schools still share data with third-party websites. Google has denied any wrongdoing.
"We have responded to the EFF in detail and we're very happy to provide Senator Franken with more information," the company said in a statement to Re/code on Wednesday.
Chromebooks are proving serious competition for Apple in the educational market, undermining Apple's attempt to sell the iPad thanks to the lure of lower prices, keyboards, and easier administration. Worries about privacy could potentially draw some schools back to Apple, which is usually stricter about what data it collects and how it uses it.
The letter addresses concerns that Google may be collecting data about students for non-educational purposes without gaining consent from parents. The company has been asked to respond by Feb. 12.
Franken is the chief Democrat in the U.S. Senate's Privacy, Technology and the Law Subcommittee, and regularly sends such letters to tech companies whenver a serious legal issue comes in front of the public eye.
In this case, the Electronic Frontier Foundation recently filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, accusing Google of violating its commitment to the Student Privacy Pledge, which asks that companies not collect, use, or share student data except when it's needed for educational purposes, or if parents consent.
While Google doesn't use the data for targeted ads within its own sites, the version of Chrome on Chromebooks is still set to sync by default, giving the company access to browser history, search requests, and more. Google has promised to disable sync with other Google services for educational Chromebooks, but the EFF claims this doesn't go far enough, and that the adminstrative settings Google provides to schools still share data with third-party websites. Google has denied any wrongdoing.
"We have responded to the EFF in detail and we're very happy to provide Senator Franken with more information," the company said in a statement to Re/code on Wednesday.
Chromebooks are proving serious competition for Apple in the educational market, undermining Apple's attempt to sell the iPad thanks to the lure of lower prices, keyboards, and easier administration. Worries about privacy could potentially draw some schools back to Apple, which is usually stricter about what data it collects and how it uses it.
Comments
If it wasn't for their racketeering and Apple's naive belief in their prudence (and other nonsense) every school would have gone with iPads and developers would have been competing over how best to assist in education with apps and games.
This is why I (as I posted about previously) got our school to completely revamp how they use Google accounts for students.
To make a long story short - now students are assigned a random Google account ID each year. These account ID's get reused. This makes it difficult for Google to build a profile since different students keep using the same ID's over and over.
Prior to this their Google ID was literally their real name along with a student number (students were allowed to pick their ID as long as their number was included). I still don't know who the idiot was at their school who thought this was a good idea (nobody wants to fess up).
https://fpf.org/2015/12/01/future-of-privacy-forum-statement-regarding-electronic-frontier-foundation-student-privacy-complaint/
Don't worry about it. Google's not evil.
Yours Truly,
(signed)
Sundar Pichai
Chief Executive Officer, Google
At some point they realised monetisation of that information was important to growth to do more monitoring.
Advertising was the lowest hanging fruit.