Obligatory think of the children child catcher icon.
Google harvests school kids' web histories for ads, claims its Mississippi nemesis
Google is once again facing allegations that its cloud for education may be harvesting and selling information on school kids. Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood is suing [PDF] for full disclosure of how the Chocolate Factory handles and markets any information it collects through the G Suite for Education service it …
COMMENTS
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Thursday 19th January 2017 14:20 GMT AndyS
Re: Bah!
"It is disturbing to think that one of the world's most profitable corporations would try to make even more money by deceiving parents and taking advantage of Mississippi school children,"
Isn't it more disturbing to think of an entire state auctioning off the education of their children to the highest bidder, bringing one of the most profitable commercial advertising companies in the world into contact with one of the richest, most profitable markets (American children), and then acting all surprised and upset when they try and push some adverts?
Bloody corrupt idiots.
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Wednesday 18th January 2017 23:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
According to Hood, the state believes Google has been collecting and selling information on student activity – such as account data and browsing histories – to third parties, who then use that data for targeted advertisements.
I'm curious whether this is exactly what they are claiming. Google selling browser histories to third parties is a bit hard to swallow, even for standard users. The data is way more valuable if they keep it for themselves.
I'm going to bet that Hood did not in fact found anybody who ever managed to buy browser histories from Google, but he's betting his status as State Attorney is enough to force Google to disclose what they do. It's a fishing expedition.
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Wednesday 18th January 2017 23:32 GMT veti
Have an upvote. This stinks of "A-G wants to get his name in the press".
My guess is, the only evidence he has is that students are seeing individually targeted ads. But of course that's what Google does - that in itself is no evidence that they're sharing squat.
On the face of it, it seems very unlikely that they would. As you say, sharing the data would (a) get them into trouble (as per this story), and (b) cost them money. Seems a very strange business decision.
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Wednesday 18th January 2017 23:44 GMT veti
Well, now I've had time to read the legal filing (linked in the article), and I've done a complete U-turn. I now suspect the AG is completely right and may well have Google bang to rights.
The key point is, nowhere does he actually allege that Google is sharing the information. That detail is inserted, either by some PR flack who doesn't know what they're doing, or by El Reg, who really should know better 'cuz this is exactly how fake news spreads.
But apparently "sharing" is neither here nor there. Google promised it wouldn't even harvest or "process" the information, even completely internally, for commercial purposes.
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Thursday 19th January 2017 08:01 GMT ratfox
Re: veti
I believe the problem is here:
collecting and selling information on student activity [...] to third parties, who then use that data for targeted advertisements.
I can't find any other website claiming that Hood is accusing Google of selling data to third parties. Pretty much everybody else agrees that Google is accused of collecting data and using it for its own ads, no third party involved.
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Thursday 19th January 2017 08:19 GMT diodesign
Re: ratfox
> I can't find any other website claiming that Hood is accusing Google of selling data to third parties
This is literally what Hood said on the record, and is quoted in the story saying: "Through this lawsuit, we want to know the extent of Google's data mining and marketing of student information to third parties."
If you read through the lawsuit (eg, G 52-53), you'll see the AG accusing Google of potentially breaking promises not to share students' info to third parties, such as Google's advertising partners, without disclosing it to parents.
You guys are trollin' me. Stop it.
C.
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Thursday 19th January 2017 11:29 GMT ratfox
Re: ratfox
Sorry, I'm going to be a stickler. The lawsuit says:
G52: Google expressly commits to: "disclose clearly [...] what types of [...] information we collect, if any, and the purpose for which the information [...] is used or shared with third parties."
G53: Despite this [...] obligation, Google does not clearly disclose in a manner easy for parents to understand what types of information is [...] used, nor does it accurately disclose that it takes certain rights to which it is contractually prohibited from doing.
Hood says:
we want to know the extent of Google's data mining and marketing of student information to third parties
The article says:
the state believes Google has been collecting and selling information [...] to third parties
The lawsuit says: Google does not disclose what it does, and does "certain things" it's not allowed to, leaving it unspecified. It does not claim explicitly that Google is selling or even sharing the data to third parties. Hood says: we want to know how much Google is marketing to third parties; he does not explicitly state that Google is doing so. He also uses "marketing" rather than "selling", and I'm not sure that this means the same. The Reg article says: Google is claimed to sell the data.
The confusion between the first two might be on purpose from Hood in front of the press, but what the article claims is yet another thing.
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Thursday 19th January 2017 18:12 GMT diodesign
Re: ratfox
"Sorry, I'm going to be a stickler"
Look, Hood is on record claiming Google may be selling students' info. We've quoted him as such. The lawsuit accuses Google of breach of contract. We've said as such.
The lawsuit accuses Google of misusing students' data for "any" advertising purposes. Hood, outside the lawsuit, says this includes marketing/selling data to third parties. So there is a gap there, but the article makes that distinction - Hood says this, Hood says that, the lawsuit wants Google to open up.
Essentially, Google is being accused of potentially breaching a contract in which it promised to respect kids' privacy. That's the gist of the story however you look at the above. Google, FWIW, declined to comment.
Please, try not to nitpick us to death and accuse us of fake news. It's tedious.
C.
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Thursday 19th January 2017 13:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
"The data is way more valuable if they keep it for themselves."
Hemm, no. Google needs to monetize the data. Data have a value if you can sell them. If you keep the data you need other ways to extract value from them - but Google is an ads machine, that's where money come from. If and how Google made data available to third parties is exactly the matter of the investigation. Third parties may have been also forced to sell ads through Google - I don't believe Google sold raw data and let advertiser do whatever they wanted with them.
Still, using an education contract to gather data about users and use them to sell and funnel ads is something that should not be allowed. Even telemetry.
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Thursday 19th January 2017 13:42 GMT anonymous boring coward
Re: Education deals
"No School or Educational institution should be promoting Apple, MS, Google Etc."
Tell that to our local school who keeps giving us "rtf" documents. At least it's not Word outright...
But for some reason the Mac I print from normally (and printer refues to behave as networked) can't handle rtf very well (all images go away).
Sigh.. I advocated non-proprietary formats back in the 80s...
Schools are so easily duped by that free first fix.
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Thursday 19th January 2017 09:15 GMT alain williams
Exchange of staff with Microsoft
Can anyone tell us how many staff have moved between Microsoft and Google ? Both seem to becoming increasingly sneaky on slurping up what should be private information about you and serving up targeted adverts.
What else they do with that information no one knows, they won't say - which is just as worrying.
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Thursday 19th January 2017 10:32 GMT John Smith 19
I'm always reminded of Donald Plesance as Blowfeld in You Only Live Twice. Roughly
Blowfeld "I'm asking for some money in advance. $100million"
Chinese Agent "But that's extortion!"
Blowfeld "Extortion is my business."
Moral of story. If you hire an extortionist, expect at some point to get extorted.
So be very wary if a company who makes their money collecting personal data offers you a deal where they say they won't
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Thursday 19th January 2017 12:09 GMT Version 1.0
Re: I'm always reminded of Donald Plesance as Blowfeld in You Only Live Twice. Roughly
upvote - but in my opinion Google would have to be dumb as rocks to sell advertising in this way. The whole point of offering the suite to schools for free if to get the kids addicted to Google so that they then continue, even insist on, using Google when they graduate.
Does nobody ever play the long game anymore?
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Thursday 19th January 2017 11:41 GMT Hans 1
>Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood is suing [PDF] for full disclosure of how the Chocolate Factory handles and markets any information it collects through the G Suite for Education service it operates for roughly half of the state's K-12 schools.
If the EU counter-part could do the same for Microsoft in France, I would be very much obliged.
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Thursday 19th January 2017 12:22 GMT FuzzyWuzzys
Wakey wakey!
"It is disturbing to think that one of the world's most profitable corporations would try to make even more money by deceiving parents and taking advantage of Mississippi school children,"
Not when it involves the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung...
Come on mate, wake up and smell the cost of stuff! When are people going to realise that "free online X", never is and never will be free. These companies are simply ad revenue factories and nothing more, they need to recoup costs and show a profit else their shareholders start kicking off.
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Thursday 19th January 2017 12:48 GMT Missing Semicolon
It's too good
The pity is, that Google's offerings to business and education customers are so much more usable that Microsoft's.
My two kids experience both - one school is Google, one Office365.
I don't touch the Google stuff, it just works. Offspring 1 has been known to do homework, and submit it, on her phone in the queue to enter a class.
Offspring 2's computer needs constant fiddling with. I've given up on making OneDrive for Business work, it keeps signing itself out so that the files haven't been synced. The laptop keeps on losing the ability to print as Office inserts OneNote as the default printer - which then fails to work (probably because of the same sign-in problem).
So, despite the privacy worries, Google wins, because the product has been carefully built to work properly.
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Thursday 19th January 2017 13:48 GMT anonymous boring coward
Re: It's too good
Obviously go with the well known devil that's not been hiding and scheming.
Don't go with MS with their ugly con-man tactics (Windows 10 "upgrade"). And they SELL Windows 10!! You must be rather naive to actually pay for something they try to force down people's throats for free.
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Thursday 19th January 2017 20:52 GMT noominy.noom
U.S. K-12 is the entire free public education range. Kindergarten through grade 12, in most locales elementary, middle and high school. Most seniors (grade 12) are 18 years old at graduation. (I should note here that I can't see the picture, I have graphics redirected. A poster earlier said it looked like a teenager.)