The kids are not alright, and tech companies know it thanks to the data they have been collecting. During the worst days of the Pandemic, programs that students were using to learn from home were also tracking their data and analyzing their habits, which was used to build profiles that could bombard kids with targeted ads. A report released Tuesday by the nonprofit advocacy group Human Rights Watch says that in 49 countries it studied, 146 products that governments sometimes recommended engaged in data harvesting or monitored children's activities. These platforms used tracker technology that monitored their activities outside the classroom, often tracking their whereabouts, identifying their friends and family, and harvesting data that they sold to advertising companies. According to the report, researchers downloaded the products and created user accounts in order to track how their data was used in the apps and sites. According to the report, programs such as Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and Cisco Webex were used for remote classwork by districts in California and Texas despite not being explicitly designed for children. Some of those programs track user data. The planned face-reading tech for students has been held back by the company. Other programs were advertised for children. HRW researchers said that Texas used the website ST Math to send children's data to third party companies. The site's home page had trackers on it, as well as on the pages for math games for pre-kindergarteners and first graders. The Texas districts used education programs like Schoology and Seesaw that embedded software development kits on students' devices, which could be used to track data for the sake of advertising. Next-Level Sound can be experienced. Theater-like sound surrounds you with spatial audio with dynamic head tracking.
The Washington Post reported that the PowerSchool, which developed Schoology, denied it was tracking students, but the company does use third party tools to show targeted ads.
The data privacy whistle was blowing long before the report was released. A teacher in Texas told researchers that up to 70% of her students had a family member deported by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
This isn't the first time a company has been accused of harvesting data. Everyone from large companies like TikTok and Facebook to small developers like those who make Muslim prayer apps have shown they are not afraid of tracking user data. In EdTech's case, HRW said their products pieced together data they got from children to deduce each child's characteristics, behaviors, and interests.
The report's authors acknowledged that the programs may have changed in the year since they analyzed these products. Some companies denied that they were tracking children or that they were not intended for use by children. Some school districts defended using the products, saying that the study included homepages for these products compared to the program pages that contained less trackers. Students had to go through the homepages in order to access the programs.
The onus is on the governments to make use of software compulsory for the sake of children's privacy.
The report recommends governments conduct data privacy audits for the EdTech it endorsed, and force them to destroy children's data they collected during the months of remote learning. Researchers said that companies should remove kids' user data and restrict data tracking on any pages accessed by students.
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