Virtual learning apps collected and shared children’s data and online activity with advertisers

Millions of students who participated in virtual learning during the Covid-19 pandemic had their personal data and online habits tracked without their consent by educational apps and websites, and in many cases shared with third-party advertising technology businesses, according to a new investigation.

The findings of an investigation conducted from March 2021 to August 2021 by Human Rights Watch, an international advocacy organization, were published this week.

The investigation looked into the educational services, including online learning tools, used by students all over the world when school districts shifted to remote learning.

Human Rights Watch discovered that 146 (89 percent) of the 164 items assessed across 49 nations appeared to engage in data practices that “risked or infringed on children’s rights.” According to the report, these practices included monitoring or having the ability to monitor children without the students’ or parents’ consent, as well as collecting a variety of personal data, such as their identity, location, online activity and behaviors, and information about their family and friends.

“Children, parents, and teachers were largely kept in the dark,” Hye Jung Han, children’s rights and technology researcher at Human Rights Watch, told CNN Business. “But even if they had known what was going on, they had no choice. Children had to either use these products and pay for it with their privacy or be marked as absent and drop out of school during Covid-19.”

According to Han, the vast majority of the apps and websites evaluated by Human Rights Watch provided information about minors to Google and Facebook, which dominate the digital advertising market.

According to a spokeswoman for Facebook-parent Meta, the corporation has standards in place about how businesses can share children’s data and advertising limits for how minors can be targeted. According to a Google representative, the company expects developers and customers to follow data and privacy policies, and it prohibits any personalized or marketing ads directed at minors’ accounts. “We are evaluating the specific report claims and will take necessary action if policy violations are discovered,” stated the spokeswoman.

The report was shared with a consortium of more than a dozen international news outlets, including The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail, and El Mundo.

Albert Fox Cahn, founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and a fellow at the NYU School of Law, said the findings add to mounting concerns around the collection of data among young people. In recent months, there has been intense scrutiny from lawmakers about the impact tech platforms have on teens.

“We already knew technologies were being abused and putting children at risk, but this report is really important because it shows the scale of harm and how the same mistake is being made by educators and governments around the world,” he said.

Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a US law, policies are in place to provide broad privacy protections for student educational records and protect them from invasive online tracking.

“But schools and tech firms are circumventing the laws we’re supposed to have that make it harder for advertisers to track students and minors online,” Cahn said. “Platforms that, through loopholes, can make students some of the most surveilled individuals on the planet.”

John Davisson, director of litigation and senior counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, called the issue “a regulatory failure, pure and simple.” But he said he’s encouraged by the Federal Trade Commission recently warning ed-tech vendors about their obligations to protect children’s privacy.

Last week, the FTC announced plans to crack down on companies illegally surveilling children during online learning. “Students must be able to do their schoolwork without surveillance by companies looking to harvest their data to pad their bottom line,” said Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in a statement. “Parents should not have to choose between their children’s privacy and their participation in the digital classroom.”

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