Google has become a dominant player in educational
technology, with its Chromebook making up 51% of device sales to schools in the
third quarter of 2015. Part of the reason for this rise is that Chromebooks are
available to school districts at a fraction of the cost of other devices and
come complete with free software used by more than 50 million students and
teachers worldwide.
That’s an issue for the Electronic Frontier Foundation
(EFF), a nonprofit privacy organization, which filed a complaint with the
Federal Trade Commission accusing Google of collecting and data-mining Internet
searches by children. The group claimed Google is using some of the collected
information to sell targeted ads.
In addition, the EFF said Google is tracking user
activity through the Chrome Sync feature, which automatically is turned on in
Chromebooks. That tracking function is being used without parental consent, the
group argued.
“In some of the schools we’ve talked to parents about,
there’s literally no ability to say, ‘No,’” Nate Cardozzo, staff attorney for
the EFF, told The Washington Post.
Google countered with a blog post claiming its educational apps comply with the law, while admitting that it does
collect data of student activities to improve its products. In addition, both the
Future of Privacy Forum, which authored the student privacy pledge that was
signed by Google, and the Software and Information Industry Association sided
with Google.
“We have reviewed the EFF complaint but do not believe
it has merit,” said Jules Polonetsky, executive director of the Future of
Privacy Forum.
Along with lack of parental consent, school districts
are also not informing parents of online service policies. A 2013 study of
found that 95% of the surveyed school districts relied on an online cloud
service, but only 25% informed parents.
“Despite
publicly promising not to, Google mines students’ browsing data and other
information, and uses it for the company’s own purposes,” Cardozo said in a
statement to CBS News. “Making such promises and failing to live up to them is a
violation of FTC rules against unfair and deceptive business practices. Minors
shouldn’t be tracked or used as guinea pigs, with their data treated as a
profit center. If Google wants to use students’ data to ‘improve Google
products,’ then it needs to get express consent from parents.”
