Google The appears to be less than innocent when it comes to collecting data from underage students. Electronic Frontier Foundation says the company continues to collect and store children's information in bulk without their or their parents' consent. "Even school administrators can't understand this tactic," the EFF says.
It should be noted that this is not the first time the EFF has taken on Google over this issue. Two years ago, it filed another federal complaint against the company alleging the collection and mining of personal data, including Internet searches.
The latest EFF report says that Google continues to violate students' privacy rights without even notifying them or getting their parents' consent. If you're wondering how it does this, the answer lies in the Chromebooks that Google sells to schools in the United States.
The main problem seems to be the fact that the education system is changing the way it treats student privacy mainly due to Chromebooks that combine low cost and education.
Worse still, some Chromebook programs automatically and by default transfer student data to the cloud. This happens without the explicit consent of students or their families.
The foundation investigated 152 technology services that were reported to be used in classrooms. The findings were not very significant, as most of these services did not have privacy policies on encryption, data retention, or data sharing.
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Update: We just received Google's official response to this issue via email. You can find it here.
