Last year, Google pledged to never exploit the personal information of students for non-educational purposes, which was meant to assuage concerns that Google’s push into education would allow it to gather personal information on children. Despite this pledge, a well-known digital rights group known as the Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a complaint with the FCC, claiming that Google is not only storing information on students in kindergarten through high school that has no relevance to education, it’s analyzing that information to improve its own services.
Google is being accused of invading the privacy of students using laptop computers powered by the company’s Chrome operating system. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, depicts Google as a two-faced opportunist in a complaint filed Tuesday with the Federal Trade Commission. Google disputes the unflattering portrait and says it isn’t doing anything wrong. The complaint alleges that Google rigged the Chromebook computers in a way that enables the company to collect information about students’ Internet search requests and online video habits. The foundation says Google is dissecting the activities of students in kindergarten through 12th grade so it can improve its digital services. The complaint contends Google’s storage and analysis of the student profile violates a “Student Privacy Pledge” that the company signed last year. The pledge, which covers more than 200 companies, contains a provision guaranteeing that students’ personal information won’t be exploited for “non-educational” purposes. The foundation is calling on the FTC to investigate Google, stop it from using information on students’ activities for its own purposes and order it to destroy any information it has collected that’s not related to education.