EFF Files Complaint To FTC Alleging Google Using Chromebooks To Gather And Collect Student Information

[heirdeux]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission with a claim that Google is gathering and collecting personal information from Chromebooks used by students in schools.

EFF Files Complaint To FTC Alleging Google Using Chromebooks To Gather And Collect Student Information : Read more

 

[thekyle64]

WHAT!!! Google knows what students watch on YouTube that's crazy!, it's like they own YouTube or something

 

[hammereditor]

They own everything, including your life.

 

[firefoxx04]

No really? Google only become one of the biggest companies in the world by collecting data!!! They dont charge for ANY of their services unless you are a business and people still wonder how they get so much money.

 

[Achoo22]

That the policy states "educational/school purposes" instead of just "educational purposes" is evidence that Google is aware schools are using these devices as portable monitoring systems. Public schools are extensions of government control, subject to whatever whim current political fancy dictates. Witness: fingerprint and DNA collection and distribution, forced pledging/praying, etc. Google backtracking on a self-imposed directive isn't exactly new, either. The "do no evil" company doesn't think it's evil to rewrite hypertext links after clicking, such that the links you see on their webpage (printed or in tooltips) are not the links you actually click. I mean, seriously... they go to tremendous effort to masquerade tracking links as benign links. That, to me, is obviously, patently, the behavior of an Internet predator. And it's just one more example of Google's shady side.

 

[ZolaIII]

Well if students are using the Web browser based OS & they don't know to use: security options, secure protocols & secure apps that actually tells us how pore their education is. Most of those Cromebuck's can run Linux where freedom lies anyway along with much more possibilities of use.

 

[Avus]

They can use pen and paper and find stuff with print encyclopedia.These have no ads and secure protocols to worry about.

 

[Chris Droste]

this sounds more like a complaint filed on behalf or ill-trained educators, thinking that just because it's cheap and simple it's not automatically doing a TON OF STUFF in the background to enhance user experience and having no clue how to properly tailor that configuration for the institutions' specific needs. is Google dancing a privacy/data collection line? What company isn't these days? also, i don't believe that "default on" means "malicious contempt for privacy" It's like showing me a pair of jeans that, by default are unzipped, then trying to sue LeviStrauss for deliberating exposing my private bits without consent. Unless they can prove that ChromeOS or their "educational use apps package" still mines PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION of the student when all the sync/save/retention options are turned off, I think this is a rather strange argument that's more akin to in-fighting than a watchdog catching a bad guy.

 

[FranciscoRS]

Let me guess, the EFF is a foundation owned by Apple and/or Amazon and/or Microsoft. I have to call bullshit on this one guys, sorry.