Parents Need to Know What’s Going On Inside Their Day Care Apps

I was on a tightrope last year trying to keep my child happy and healthy. It was high time for my daughter to go to preschool when she left the stages of infancy. I contemplated the health risks over and over while she stared at the same walls. I used the internet and phone to find a spot that was close and had spots open. I saw a flyer in the packet that immediately threw me into a new set of worries that I didn't want to deal with.

I don't know what goes through other parents' minds at this point, but I do privacy and security oriented work as my day job at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, so I couldn't help myself from looking at the security controls Brightwheel gave to me as a parent. The data was left up to a company. The app gave me some comfort, allowing me to see my baby smiling, make friends, and ride my bike outside. In that first week, you aren't there to look after every aspect of their life. I didn't see a lot of settings that talked about security. The only thing that was done was to use a PIN code.

I looked at the huge amount of data that was being shared and stored by this app. The more information I saw about my daughter, the more worried I became.

I couldn't sit on this anymore. Most people wouldn't call me a hacker. Being a mother means doing everything I can to make my daughter safe. I dove into the early education landscape of apps and didn't like what I found.

I work in a good place. A coworker was asked to use Brightwheel and I got a meeting with an actual person at the company. The meeting was productive in that Brightwheel seemed to understand the concerns but that they were woefully behind the rest of the industry in privacy and security protections.

Two-factor authentication is one of the most well-known protection measures. Some services now require you to add a one-time code to your password. It gives an enormous bang for your buck when it comes to security. It is an industry standard and has been spreading quickly.

Brightwheel is the only one that offers two-factor verification for all school and day care administrators. It's bullshit.