Privacy

Last year brought a record number of US school-related cybersecurity incidents, some "resulting in school closures, millions of dollars of stolen taxpayer dollars, and student data breaches directly linked to identity theft and credit fraud," states a report presented at the K-12 Cybersecurity Leadership Symposium. The report encourages administrators to review their resiliency plans and should serve as a reminder to parents that you should know your school or district’s plan for a cybersecurity break and understand how parents are notified if a situation occurs.

A Northern District judge in California has approved Facebook's $650 million class-action settlement for the lawsuit regarding its photo-scanning feature. The lawsuit claimed that Facebook’s Tag Suggestions tool, which scanned faces in users’ photos and offered suggestions about who the person might be, stored biometric data without users’ consent in violation of a Illinois law. The payment, which will be distributed among roughly 1.6 million plaintiffs, is one of the largest of its kind and a good reminder that what you post becomes fair game for Facebook to use at their discretion.

There are four key US Supreme Court cases that govern students' speech in a school environment, according to Scott Johnson, law professor at Concord Law School. In a recent commentary, Johnson reflects on the current law, students’ privacy rights, and on the court's potential to expand the scope of the law when it hears the case of a high-schooler who was penalized for profanity-laced Snapchat posts about the school. As the law currently stands, speech that may be protected for adults outside of the school environment – like offensive or vulgar language – can be restricted for students inside of the school environment. This commentary is a must read for all parents ,because on some occasion your children may speak their mind online, and what is protected and what is not runs a very fine line.

A recent survey found that found high numbers of K-12 teachers are unfamiliar with the various forms of cyberattacks. For example, 48 percent of K-12 educators said they had no familiarity with "videobombing." Likewise, the same percentage said they didn't know what denial-of-service attacks were. Four in 10 (41 percent) were unfamiliar with ransomware attacks. More K-12 educators knew something about data breaches (75 percent) and phishing scams (79 percent), but these results show that parents cannot depend on schools and teachers to be up on the latest in cybersecurity threats, and may need to take the responsibility of making their children aware.

No matter how you look at it, YouTube has become an essential platform for most kids - potentially more important, and more influential, than any other TV channel or network. But YouTube is risky, with content rabbit holes that can take your kids into dangerous, and potentially harmful territory. That’s why YouTube developed YouTube Kids, its dedicated platform for youngsters that runs separate from the main app, and doesn't facilitate links to all YouTube content. However at some point, older kids will be keen to move on, and that can put parents in a challenging position.

To address this, YouTube has developed a new process that will enable parents to monitor their child's YouTube activity via a connected experience, while also giving them more privacy and independence.. Through this new option, parents will be able to choose from three levels of supervision  for their childrens' activity depending on age and maturity. YouTube says that in-app purchases will be disabled within this new experience, as well as creation and comments features, though parents will eventually have variable controls for each element. YouTube also notes that it will continue to evolve the tool over time to improve the options and tools available.

Many school districts across the country don't have formal on-or-off camera policies for remote students due to issues such as bullying concerns, mental health issues and background distractions (like one Mom who flashed her child’s class by accident). Some teachers ask students to display a photo of themselves, and others say they only ask students to show their work, so the focus remains on academics. It can be hard on teachers, though, looking at a sea of black boxes.

LinkedIn is following Twitter's foray into conversation controls by enabling members to restrict who's able to see and comment on their posts and updates. Members also can prevent replies to specific posts and "mute" select users or company pages from their feed.

Almost everyone agrees that more control is needed on how our private data is used, and a new California law may lead the way. When it comes to apps, up until now our choice has been to either use the app and trust that the vaguely worded privacy agreement really does (fingers crossed) protect our data, or not use the app at all. Of course, there are numerous examples of how that trust has been broken time after time. Now a California law is taking aim at controlling personal data use by companies. Under the law, state residents — and in some cases, all Americans — can demand that large companies show people what data they have about you and with whom they’ve shared it. People will also have the right to request the companies delete and not “sell” the data they have about you.

It is not perfect and it can be a bit complicated. People must go to each company that might have their data in order to delete or restrict what it can do with it. But the California law also envisions the possibility of “authorized agents” that would exercise data rights on our behalf. Instead of you filling out 100 forms to ask 100 companies to delete your data, you would pick a privacy assistant to do it for you. Consumer Reports last month started offering privacy assistant services as a test project.

Interestingly enough, the privacy assistant might just be a web browser where you check a box once and each site you visit then gets an automated notice to prohibit the personal information collected there from being shared or sold. Think of it as a version of the telemarketer “Do Not Call” list. More details about this prospect will emerge as it gets tested and developed.

Curious or maybe even concerned about how secure the information your school is holding about your child is? The Student Privacy Compass website, formerly known as FERPA Sherpa, is an excellent resource for student data privacy information. The site publishes a report called the State Student Privacy Report Card authored by the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy and The Network for Public Education. The Student Privacy Compass website also provides detailed information concerning state student data privacy laws on a per-state basis. New York, California, Virginia and Texas are four states who have taken the lead in protecting the privacy of student data.

For those fortunate enough to not have had their education derailed by the coronavirus pandemic, remote proctoring may be a foreign concept. It some cases, it literally involves a stranger watching you take a test through your webcam as a way to guard against cheating. In other instances, an opaque computer-vision system attempts to detect "abnormal exam-taker activity" — whatever that may mean. Now lawmakers have vowed to look further into possibly discriminatory glitches including allegations that web cams have trouble clearly seeing or “registering” black and brown students’ faces unless the lighting is just right, a perceived lack of transparency, and concerns that teachers are basing cheating accusations on what may be flawed technology.