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Education Privacy Software Technology

US Colleges Are Trying To Install Location Tracking Apps On Students' Phones (theverge.com) 139

Posted by BeauHD from the quietly-being-normalized dept.
Some U.S. colleges are now apparently requiring students to install a location tracking app to track attendance. Sean Hollister writes for The Verge: The Kansas City Star reported that at the University of Missouri, new students "won't be given a choice" of whether to install the SpotterEDU app, which uses Apple's iBeacons to broadcast a Bluetooth signal that can help the phone figure out whether a student is actually in a room. But a university spokesperson told Campus Reform on Sunday that only athletes are technically required to use the app, and a new statement from the university on Monday not only claims that it's "completely optional" for students, but that the app's being piloted with fewer than 2 percent of the student body.

What the reports do agree on: the app uses local Bluetooth signals, not GPS, so it's probably not going to be very useful to track students outside of school. "No GPS tracking is enabled, meaning the technology cannot locate the students once they leave class," reads part of the university's statement. SpotterEDU isn't just used at the University of Missouri, though -- it's being tested at nearly 40 schools, company founder and former college basketball coach Rick Carter told The Washington Post in December. The Post's story makes it sound remarkably effective, with one Syracuse professor attesting that classes have never been so full, with more than 90 percent attendance. But that same professor attested that an earlier version of the app did have access to GPS coordinates, if only for a student to proactively share their location with a teacher. The Post reports that Degree Analytics is also being used in an additional 19 schools, but unlike SpotterEDU, it uses Wi-Fi signals instead of Bluetooth.

The New York Times also reported in September of a similar app from a company called FanMaker that provides "loyalty points" to students who stick around to watch college sports games at the stadium instead of skipping out. That app is in use at 40 schools, the Times wrote.
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US Colleges Are Trying To Install Location Tracking Apps On Students' Phones More

US Colleges Are Trying To Install Location Tracking Apps On Students' Phones

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  • Location tracking is for cows. Moo, cows, moooooo!
    MOOOOO, you location-tracked cows.

    • Location tracking APPS are for cows. Moo, cows, moooooo!
      MOOOOO, you location-tracked cows.

      FTFY.

    • Not really surprised that the students in Missouri are cows. Mooooo!

      But I don't think "a college in Missouri are trying to" is really the same as "US colleges are trying to." Maybe "a college in the US is trying to," but that already is low information merely for clickbait.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Calydor ( 739835 )

      Wow, that's a blast from the past.

  • 1984 is now. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @07:09PM (#59666182)

    We have doublethink, we have newspeak, we have the telescreen -- in our pocket!

    When paper books and film on real actual film are dead, then who's to say Minitruth won't actually exist, and "fix" history? Or the present?

    Hell, with the news, well.. there it is. Written in realtime for your entertainment.

    And then, track everyone everywhere.

    Get them when they're young, right? Yeah, been going on for a while now.

    Where's my two minutes' rage? Oh yeah that's all the rage these days, raging. Rage it up yo!

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @07:10PM (#59666188)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • What if my phone battery dies. I don't get credit for being in class ?

    • Re: Sorry Sir.... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by gerf ( 532474 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @08:21PM (#59666348) Journal
      Some classes require things such as social media for collaboration with other students. Just as phones became ubiquitous decades ago, despite phone records, social media and its tracking has also become required. Even Slashdot, the pinnacle of useful anon posts, no longer allows me to post anon.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Even Slashdot, the pinnacle of useful anon posts, no longer allows me to post anon.

        Really?

      • Some classes at some colleges. Email worked just fine for that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mce ( 509 )
      I'd simply show them my 2G and my 3G Nokia phones and say that I'll gladly install the app on either one of them if they can provide it. If then the big college brothers still insist, they'd be told that they are very free to provide me with a college funded smartphone that I would never ever use. Too bad if/when the battery on that thing dies after a day or so and never gets recharged...

  • The sky won't fall, we will (Score:3)

    by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @07:12PM (#59666190)
    So ya. Even collages are fucking flushing themselves down the toilet. So much for our great experiment in democracy and freedom. I'm starting to think the preppers are right.
    • Cynical as it is of me to say: look at how many major civilizations have risen and fallen over the millenia. Why should we think that the United States is any different? Hell, our current POTUS so far as I can see is hell-bent to try to destroy this country.
      All I ask is, if you're going to blow up my world, at least have the decency to wait until I'm dead, ok? :p

      • Yeah, stock market at an all time high, lowest unemployment ever. The US is going to hell! If only we had Clinton II, things would be so much better.

        • Funny. When Obama had a stock run, which is still more than Trump I might add, it was "the president can't and shouldn't take credit for that". Now it's the only thing Trump has. Unemployment is at a all time low. That is great. However, wages have been stagnant to you need 3 jobs to make ends me. Care to own that as well?

          • Yeah it's almost as if who the President is doesn't matter. Maybe it is the PEOPLE that matter?

            • Yeah it's almost as if who the President is doesn't matter. Maybe it is the PEOPLE that matter?

              Well, wait and see, if Sanders or Warren gets into the Oval Office, I think you'll see the stock market tank pretty quickly.

              I'm guessing the economy in general will take a hit if either of them get elected.

              • Trump's massive, irresponsible deficit spending is fueling the economy. We can't live like this forever, and some future president is going to have to make changes that will likely also result in a cooling economy.

          • you need 3 jobs to make ends

            Oh horseshit. Hyperbole.

          • However, wages have been stagnant to you need 3 jobs to make ends me. Care to own that as well?

            That got its start during Nixon.

            Thank you for playing.

          • Not only are wages growing, they're growing fastest for the bottom 25%, (https://www.frbatlanta.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker).

            The claim that "you need 3 jobs" is just plain false. "Multiple jobholders" have hovered 5% of the labor force for years. It peaked a little over 6% during the '90's, fell to around 5%, and stayed there, (https://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab9.htm). And that is in spite of the rise of Uber, "the gig economy", and so forth.

            While it is generally true that Presidents tend ge

          • Wages have been stagnant for the 40 years I've worked as an adult. You can show whatever graphs you want, but in my experience with working for around 12 different companies (some for a year, a few for 5 or more), companies only offer 'cost of living' increases year after year. Which is stagnant. The only exception is sometimes, when one gets a promotion, one might get a token increase. My daughter's husband has gotten some really good increases in his first few years of employment, but so did I as I ro

            • he only way I've gotten meaningful raises over the last 40 years was to switch companies.

              Well, that's been the norm for decades now.....the days of a job for life have been gone since at least the 70's....

        • Yep, them are the facts. For more fun:
          Obama: unemp ~10%, reduced to 5%. Improvement 100%
          Trump: unemp ~5%, reduced to 4%. Improvement 20%

          • Easy to reduce a high number to a low number. Much harder to reduce a low number to an even lower number.

            Reduce your defect rate from 10% to 5%.
            Now reduce it from 5% to 0%.
            Same percentage...not the same difficulty.

          • Sooo....improvement 20%. So the sky ISN'T falling? Amazing. So you agree that the statement: "Hell, our current POTUS so far as I can see is hell-bent to try to destroy this country." is BS? thanks for confirming!

        • Fuck off.

    • US colleges are in a death spiral right now. They had a time where they could enjoy hyper-inflated tuition and because of student loans and grants, they still had their classes full. Now people are disillusioned because college doesn't grant them jobs like it did pre-2008, but they still have to pay for it, and compete for the same jobs that the people fresh out of high school are going for.

      In the past, one also could make it through a recession when jobs were unavailable by going for a MS or other degree

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The school is requiring students to have a smartphone, and one capable of running the app. Maybe not such a stretch now, but still. What if a student doesn't want or can't afford such a phone?

    • And this is why I turn blue-tooth off and only use it when I update the one App that requires it.

    • The school is requiring students to have a smartphone, and one capable of running the app. Maybe not such a stretch now, but still. What if a student doesn't want or can't afford such a phone?

      What if a student can't afford tuition, textbooks, housing, meal plans? I imagine if a student can afford all of those, they can afford a phone. That doesn't mean I'm in favor of this kind of tracking, but I don't think the cost is the big issue here.

      • Anyways mommy will insist that daddy pays for the little darling's phones in have case they have "an emergency" (mommy needs to text darling every day, y'know).

      • If you're not taking out loans, at an extra grand (even $500), yes it's a big deal. That and the phone is *only* required for tracking, not class.

        I've never owned one. I ain't buying one just for their app. And yes, I live in Missouri.

        It's bullshit.
        • Text books are often more expensive than a cheap Android phone.

          • The real cost isn't the phone, it's the cell plan that goes with it. Though if it's just using Bluetooth then you might be able to get away without a cell plan, or for that matter, a cheap tablet instead of a phone. Not that any of this excuses what the college is doing.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by TWX ( 665546 )

          If you're not taking out loans, at an extra grand (even $500), yes it's a big deal. That and the phone is *only* required for tracking, not class.

          I've never owned one. I ain't buying one just for their app. And yes, I live in Missouri.

          It's bullshit.

          What about using an Android device that isn't a phone?

          My guess is the reason they're doing this is because they figure most students would not ever hand their phone to a classmate to carry in for them. Thing is, there are non-phone devices, there are phones that aren't connected to cellular service, etc. It would probably be trivial to set up such a device to satisfy the app but without cell service. Which also means a classmate could carry a student's non-phone in and get that student attendance credit.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mce ( 509 )
            There's a business opportunity here... Get hold of a bunch of al-cheapo second or third hand smart phones. Damn, just steal them if needed. Hand them out to students not interested in attending class and let the dimwit college install the app. Then have the students bring back the phones and in return for a small monthly/.../whatever fee, offer to take all those phones to class on one big bag.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Dog-Cow ( 21281 )

        I paid for few textbooks, lived with my parents and ate at home. Just because one is attending college does not mean one has money.

    • you get an loan

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fazig ( 2909523 )
      Maybe they could provide a budget one if you can't afford it?
      There are decent enough phones with all the required tracking capabilities that cost less than $100. You can even get them with a removable battery, so battery life time becomes less of an issue.

      And as far as not wanting one, I suppose in your educational agreement they could demand that you have one that is compliant with what they want?
      I am not sure how the legal situation in the US is here. Can they require you to carry certain things on yo
  • With basic software, they could use their BLE beacons to track everyone with bluetooth, even if they don't have the app. Then, load in a week's data and guess the schedule of every bluetooth device, then correlate that with human schedules, and ake a correlation between device and human. Then track that device on and off campus (with limited range, so they'll be paying bars and stores to put in their trackers).

    No need to have any app, or any terms of service. You are tracking their public broadcasts.

    • With basic software, they could use their BLE beacons to track everyone with bluetooth, even if they don't have the app. Then, load in a week's data and guess the schedule of every bluetooth device, then correlate that with human schedules, and ake a correlation between device and human. Then track that device on and off campus (with limited range, so they'll be paying bars and stores to put in their trackers).

      No need to have any app, or any terms of service. You are tracking their public broadcasts.

      You know, your battery life usually gets quite a bit longer when you turn off WiFi, Bluetooth and location...

      I don't need any of them unless I'm out somewhere I haven't been before.

      I use my cheap android tablet with pre-loaded maps and GPS for navigation. (the tablet is usually plugged into car power when traveling)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AK Marc ( 707885 )
        Yes. If you deliberately hide yourself, it's easy to hide yourself. But with Airpods, wireless keyboards and other things people use all the time that require Bluetooth, most people will be trackable all the time.
    • My thoughts exactly. No need for anything on the phone, but you would need to do a lot of work on the back end to set up the analytics. Hell, I think the Merakis my company deploys have most of the needed functionality out of the box.

  • athletes? is the NCAA covering the data plan + phone and are they now employees?

  • I think anyone in a tech major would have a field day with this one. There's no way that it won't be exploited vigorously and hilariously.

    Now the poor liberal arts students might be put upon, but they may be able to start an outreach program for lonely nerds who can hook them up with the work-around.

  • I understand tracking THESE scholarship kids (Score:4, Interesting)

    by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @07:50PM (#59666272)

    I despise tracking but this isn't a private school like Harvard or Stanford. Tracking makes sense given that the state is paying for the athletes' education and IF Mizzou student-athletes have a low graduation rate.

    in addition, how many of these kids will be become full time, professional athletes, 1%? Which means all the rest will need to fall back on their education to get a job in the real world. Who pays if they can't?

    You want my tax dollars for a free education, I want to know it's being spent wisely.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geek ( 5680 )

      Remember when searching their lockers was taboo and the stuff of news headlines? Now we're basically tagging them like cattle and yet people still make jokes about slippery slopes.

      • Remember when searching their lockers was taboo and the stuff of news headlines? Now we're basically tagging them like cattle and yet people still make jokes about slippery slopes.

        ...then they just disposed of the lockers, problem solved. Wonder what they're planning for the cattle.

    • You are not from GB or Europe are you.

      CCTV on nearly every corner.

    • "Not without a warrant, motherfucker."

      Huh. And all this time I'd thought John McClane was saying "Yippie-Ki-Yay".

  • What the reports do agree on: the app uses local Bluetooth signals, not GPS, so it's probably not going to be very useful to track students outside of school

    Unless, of course, the app maker decides to partner with local businesses to let them track and market to students, then every business near the campus may have trackers.

  • This is entirely stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @08:16PM (#59666334)

    Sure, many students benefit from attendance, but some do not and some only do for some lecturers. The first thing I tell my students that attendance is optional, except at the exams. It is _my_ job to make the lecture worthwhile to attend. And for those that do well just with the slides, that is fine too. Forced attendance only promotes lecturer laziness and lecturer ego.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geek ( 5680 )

      Sure, many students benefit from attendance, but some do not and some only do for some lecturers. The first thing I tell my students that attendance is optional, except at the exams. It is _my_ job to make the lecture worthwhile to attend. And for those that do well just with the slides, that is fine too. Forced attendance only promotes lecturer laziness and lecturer ego.

      I had a professor that didn't take attendance at all. His opinion was if they didn't show up that was their problem. The entire point of college was that you didn't have to be there. It's a privilege and you can make use of it or not.

      We've seen this before. High school used to be optional, as soon as it was more or less made mandatory the quality went down. Now we're seeing it at the University level and expect the outcome to be different?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fazig ( 2909523 )
        I studied in Germany. There I've had only professor that would even bother with taking attendance, a 'business administration 101' for engineers professor. It was a 6th semester class where the amount of remaining students was very manageable and made taking attendance quick and painless.
        Allegedly he did it for his own personal statistic to correlate between attendance and the performance in exams. I never saw the results. But I had some concerns about the testing methodology because of survivor bias as the

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by j-beda ( 85386 )

          On the academic level I think making attendance voluntary as well as only having finals that determine whether you pass or fail and nothing in between is a good measure to separate the wheat from the chaff (despite of failure rates).

          There are those who perform well without attending classes for attributes like high self-efficacy. And there are those who perform well through attending classes, since there they can have a dialogue or in general benefit from peer learning. Here I think it's not the duty of the institution of higher learning to do this work for the students, but for students to find the way that works for them themselves.

          Some people may be in need of help here and could perform well if they got help. But that is also something those people have to decide on their own.

          There is a balance that needs to be struck between too much hand-holding and not enough. If your goal is to FIND people who have mastered the material, then a purely evaluative model would be fine - just have some accreditation exams. That's how lawyers do it in some states - just pass the bar, no need to go to law school. If your goal is to PRODUCE people who have mastered the material, then providing instruction and incentives for taking part in that instruction makes sense.

          Since we as a society benefit f

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawk ( 1151 )

        I never took attendance, save for one program for veterans that required verification to keep their benefits.

        I found that tests were sufficient enforcement.

        If attending my class isn't useful enough, I'm in the wrong business. And for the handful that can get by without class, or were forced to formally take a class that they didn't need, neither the student, I, nor the other students benefits from enforced attendance.

        Then again, I had a lot more time available in my office for those that bothered to come t

    • One boring lecturer, one student and a bag full of phones... Anyone? Anyone??

      • One boring lecturer, one student and a bag full of phones... Anyone? Anyone??

        Bag full of $45 Walmart specials. "Sure, that's my phone. Never leave home without it!" *reads text on an iPhone* "This? This is my security blanket and sexual acceptability meter. Yes, both at once. Can't live without it, can't get laid without it."

    • The first thing I tell my students that attendance is optional, except at the exams. It is _my_ job to make the lecture worthwhile to attend.

      This!

      If I can ace the class by only showing up for the exams, there is clearly no point in showing up for anything but the exams.

  • seems to be a monthly story nowdays. Again, the only professors in college that took attendance were those who couldn't teach their way out of a paper bag. Their lectures were a useless waste of time, but they took attendance so you had to show up.

    The good teachers, on the other hand, didn't care if you showed up or not. They had good lectures and students showed up because it was useful.

    Me? Tell me when the quizes and tests were gonna be and what they would cover. If your lectures were worthwhil

    • Unfornately, some students buy papers and cheat. Seeing the students in class and hearing the students, and questioning them on the material live, is vital feedback to grading students and to verifying that they do the work. It's also an opportunity to notice failing students _long_ before they flunk and help them with class. It's also very difficult to do if the student is never in class and especially if they are cheating.

  • This is how it starts (Score:3)

    by p51d007 ( 656414 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @09:06PM (#59666436)
    You start with children...get them "use" to being tracked for ummm attendance purposes. By the time they enter the work force, their employer will track them, for optimizing work performance. Then your insurance company (auto) already in some cases tracks how you drive, for ummmmm a good driver discount. They "ease" you into giving up your rights to privacy, in the name of safety & security. Such bullsh*t! "Those that give up their freedoms, in the name of safety & security, deserve neither!"
  • I go to one of these universities. Every single kid is glued to their phone, 100% of the time. No exceptions. They're all addicted to apps, anyway. They're all being tracked by every company and government that wants to track them.

    I'm not like that, so I have a phone that I turn on at the beginning of these classes, and off at the end. Really simple.

  • Mule your way to no student loans! (Score:3)

    by Vrallis ( 33290 ) on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @09:42PM (#59666526) Homepage

    Sounds like a good way for an enterprising student to help pay their tuition by being a phone mule.

  • Why? (Score:2)

    by Xiaran ( 836924 )
    Why, I have to ask as a non American, are your universities wanting to track athletes only then? Are they like employees?
  • Use one of these [amazon.com], a sweet Faraday Cage bag. Problem solved!
  • This has some serious implications and limitations. What happens when:
    -Your phone battery dies - Do you get points off for forgetting to charge your phone, having an old phone, or using your phone too much when the only available section of the class was late in the day?
    -Your phone crashes - They do sometimes, and you may not notice immediately, especially if you are paying attention in class.
    -You forget to turn bluetooth back on - Maybe you didn't need it before class or were conserving battery life ear

  • ..wait a minute not only you as a student pay for the sport teams tuition and wages, you're also being force fed to be a fan of them to create an illusion that the team has more fans, presumably for advertising purposes or what the f is the motive for them to fill the seats with people who don't actually give a f about what is going on in the field?

    college sports will die in 10-20 years. It's just too expensive and has nothing to do with the service the colleges customers pay for. maybe some self sufficient

  • Why do they care? (Score:3)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @01:23AM (#59666910) Homepage

    As a college instructor let me say: I don't care if a student skips class. They're an adult, they've got to know.

    Maybe today's topic is something they already know - then there are better uses of their time. Maybe they're lazy, or don't care, in which case they wouldn't pay attention and would just distract others. Either way: if they don't want to be there, then I don't want them there.

    So: why do colleges go to such lengths to force attendance?

  • They should do like Trump and ask the Russians to track the phones for them
    • That would work but only if we already knew that russians had tracked the phones and already had the data.

  • Attendance is Wrong (Score:3)

    by logicnazi ( 169418 ) <gerdesNO@SPAMinvariant.org> on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @04:58AM (#59667124) Homepage

    Iâ(TM)m a college professor and ultimately I bow to the system and offer some grade benefit to attendance but always small enough and porous enough that the motivated can avoid it. But ultimately it's morally wrong to take attendance in college and consider that in assigning grades as the student who does equally well without attending has shown a greater mastery of the material.

    Worse, some people like myself find it super difficult to learn anything from lecture. Had I been required to attend class at Caltech I would have failed out since I wouldn't have had time to actually read and learn the material with all that wasted class time. We give lip service to learning styles but when it comes to accommodating them not so much.

    Yes, students do worse in the first class attendance isn't taken but they then learn to manage their own attendance. But even if this isn't true it wouldn't be ok to give students who don't attend a worse grade than their mastery of the subject entails even if it helps others.

    And the truth is most professors require attendance as much out of ego and moralizing views which are totally not appropriate to someone employed by the students to teach them.

    So I dislike making attendance easier to take but realistically it's not much more privacy invading with tech than it was using pen and paper.

    • If/when I get tenure I will stop but I serve no one by getting fired and replaced with someone more eager to grade on attendance.

  • I could have sworn that when I attended college 40 years ago, I paid them. They weren't my mother and were not responsible for my finances. I paid them a fee to teach me courses. I did accept their conditions if I wanted a degree that I had to take a bunch of absolutely useless classes and pay for them. But if I wanted to pay for classes I didn't attend, it was none of their business as long as I passed the tests and other coursework requirements. It didn't cost them anything if I didn't attend classes.

  • And perhaps education will move beyond collages and universities.
  • This sort of thinking only reinforces the idea that honesty, integrity and self-determination are not valuable qualities in student, or educational institution. The students who show up to class do so because they want to learn and expect to learn in the environment. The students that do not show up, do not have those expectations. Forcing students to show up only reinforces the idea that coming to class is about doing what you're told instead of being trusted to do what you need to do for your own learn
  • https://confucius.missouri.edu... [missouri.edu]

    Of course, the University of Missouri must come into line with the Chinese Communist Party's Social Credit System --- we should all expect this. When the morons, idiots, jackholes and traitor-scum allow the CCP's Ministry of State Security to establish intelligence stations/operatives throughout the USA and Canada . . . .

    https://www.gao.gov/extracts/c... [gao.gov]

    One must expect this crapola!
    (One clownish commenter from Germany --- probably Mercator, an outfit financed b

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