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Remote Learning Apps Tracked Millions of US Children During Pandemic (msn.com) 44

Posted by EditorDavid from the little-data dept.
An international investigation uncovered some disturbing results, reports the Washington Post. "Millions of children had their online behaviors and personal information tracked by the apps and websites they used for school during the pandemic..." The educational tools were recommended by school districts and offered interactive math and reading lessons to children as young as prekindergarten. But many of them also collected students' information and shared it with marketers and data brokers, who could then build data profiles used to target the children with ads that follow them around the Web.

Those findings come from the most comprehensive study to date on the technology that children and parents relied on for nearly two years as basic education shifted from schools to homes. Researchers with the advocacy group Human Rights Watch analyzed 164 educational apps and websites used in 49 countries, and they shared their findings with The Washington Post and 12 other news organizations around the world.... What the researchers found was alarming: nearly 90 percent of the educational tools were designed to send the information they collected to ad-technology companies, which could use it to estimate students' interests and predict what they might want to buy.

Researchers found that the tools sent information to nearly 200 ad-tech companies, but that few of the programs disclosed to parents how the companies would use it. Some apps hinted at the monitoring in technical terms in their privacy policies, the researchers said, while many others made no mention at all. The websites, the researchers said, shared users' data with online ad giants including Facebook and Google. They also requested access to students' cameras, contacts or locations, even when it seemed unnecessary to their schoolwork. Some recorded students' keystrokes, even before they hit "submit."

The "dizzying scale" of the tracking, the researchers said, showed how the financial incentives of the data economy had exposed even the youngest Internet users to "inescapable" privacy risks — even as the companies benefited from a major revenue stream.
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Remote Learning Apps Tracked Millions of US Children During Pandemic More

Remote Learning Apps Tracked Millions of US Children During Pandemic

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  • Creepy and illegal. Post the names of the companies creeping children then shut them down.

  • Will Not Fix (Score:4, Insightful)

    by algaeman ( 600564 ) on Sunday May 29, 2022 @12:39AM (#62574042)
    Working as designed

  • And this is why all those 'privacy' laws about targeting ads 'at children' (not FOR children, as someone always tries to astroturf) in the EU are being made.

    If this sort of stuff doesn't bother you, then I'm not sure what to tell you.

  • From TFA:

    “If the school is telling you to use this app and you don’t have the knowledge that it might be recording your students’ information, that to me is a huge concern,” Rufer said.

    I'm not surprised teachers did not know, they probably were struggling with how to use the software and teach. The district where I lived rolled out a bunch of software and basically said "watch the help videos and be sure to get all your students up and running..." Teachers I knew struggled to do th

    • âoeIf the school is telling you to use this app and you donâ(TM)t have the knowledge that it might be recording your studentsâ(TM) information, that to me is a huge concern,â Rufer said.

      [...]Things like tracking were far from anyone's mind, especially teachers who were just trying to teach.

      That's the point of the article, isn't it? But while you seem to believe that the article finds fault with teachers, "the school" is really shorthand for "the school administration" because that is where the buck is supposed to stop. And someone needs to be thinking about whether children are being tracked, and whether such tracking is warranted. Not only not thinking about that but not seeing that it is not being abused is negligence.

      I don't think anyone reasonable would expect the teachers to have time to

      • âoeIf the school is telling you to use this app and you donâ(TM)t have the knowledge that it might be recording your studentsâ(TM) information, that to me is a huge concern,â Rufer said.

        [...]Things like tracking were far from anyone's mind, especially teachers who were just trying to teach.

        That's the point of the article, isn't it? But while you seem to believe that the article finds fault with teachers, "the school" is really shorthand for "the school administration" because that is where the buck is supposed to stop. And someone needs to be thinking about whether children are being tracked, and whether such tracking is warranted. Not only not thinking about that but not seeing that it is not being abused is negligence.

        I don't think anyone reasonable would expect the teachers to have time to concern themselves with that issue in addition to all of the other things they have to consider, and the fact that in some cases there are literally not enough hours in the day to do all of the things they are expected to do already even according to the school administration. But I think anyone reasonably would expect someone to be sure that children's PII is not being collected and abused. The school wants to talk up this in loco parentis shit when they talk about being responsible for your kids, and then they don't want to be held responsible. What are the school administrators good for if they can't study the issue enough to know what the key issues are, and account for them?

        I fully agree with you and do not blame the teachers. My experience with school administration is all they want to do is keep parents off their backs and will do whatever to accomplish that. If it means not bothering to look into, or tell parents, about tracking well, so be it. The teachers I know quit or retire because they are sick of school administration BS. Our district is now dealing with parents who are upset their "A student" kids are getting C's and blaming the teachers; will the administration

    • What EULA and TOS, out of the 46 different programs pushed out to student Chromebooks over the lockdown period in my wife's district, the only ones that had any presentation of TOS/EULA whatsoever were from Google and Microsoft. Every other company presented no such thing with their software.

  • Hell, parents don't track their kids any more. Why shouldn't advertisers take up the slack?

    • I'm continually being told both here on Slashdot and elsewhere that parents are failing because they are too involved in their children's lives today, and that running wild was the best thing that ever happened to people as a child. People are forever talking about how much better their childhood was because they weren't being tracked. Which is it?

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