After signing a pledge and continuing to talk about online privacy, search engine giant Google has been accused of continuing the spy on children under the guise of its education program.
On Tuesday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation registered a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against Google. The Foundation declared that Google continues to spy and keep data related to the browsing habits of children despite having publicly signed a pledge for the protection of privacy. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has requested that the Federal Trade Commission begin an immediate investigation into the matter.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is one of the foremost organizations battling for online privacy and continuously presses everywhere it can for expanded online and digital rights for people, according to PC World. The organization claimes that Google continues to collect data and monitor closely the browsing habits of children under the guise of its Google for Education Program.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation claims that Google is in direct violation of Section 5 of the Federal Communications Act and want the Federal Trade Commission to prosecute an investigation quickly and publicly. In a publicly issued statement, the organization said that, “despite publicly promising not to, Google mines students’ browsing data, and other information, and uses it for the company’s own purposes.”
Both Microsoft and Google have highly active education programs that they sell into the nation’s schools. Google gives away apps that both students and teachers can use to enhance learning as well as offering the schools a break on tablets and Chromebooks. Most school systems are leaping at the offers due to the perpetual poverty of most public school systems. Google claims to have sold over 10 million Chromebooks worldwide. It also claims that over 50 million teachers and students are using their Google Apps for Education.
The problem that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has is in the way those products and services are delivered by Google. The Foundation claims that Google records and stores everything that a student does while they are online and logged in to their Google accounts. This is regardless of the device they are using. If they are online, Google is following them and recording where they go and what they are seeing and saving.
