Communications of the ACM
Ed Tech Wrongfully Tracked Schoolchildren During Pandemic: Human Rights Watch
Outside of Australia, governments including those in Ghana, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, and Turkey built and offered education apps that had the capability to collect Android advertising ID from children.
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A Human Rights Watch (HRW) study of 164 government-endorsed education technology products used by students during the COVID-19 pandemic found that 146 of those products endangered children's privacy by collecting and selling their contact, keystroke, and location data to ad tech companies.
The study found that 199 third-party companies received such personal data, even though just 35 vendors had disclosed that data would be collected for behavioral advertising.
Overall, HRW said the privacy of about 41 million students and teachers was endangered by these products.
In Australia, the study found Minecraft Education Edition, Cisco's Webex, Education Perfect, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Webex, and Adobe Connect were among the programs able to track students.
From ZDNet
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