Privacy

Curious about what schools are doing to protect student data and maintain student privacy? Check out this article in Education Week about a survey that was conducted for the Consortium for School Networking of school district tech leaders who, overall, say that student-data privacy and security is a somewhat or much more of an important priority this year compared with last year. One interesting fact that emerged is that schools in urban areas are more concerned about cybersecurity and privacy than their rural peers, but that may be that because rural schools are simply just more concerned about getting access to broadband service.

Apple and Facebook are among a coalition of civic society groups, trade associations and technology companies that are fighting globally to mandate encryption rules and keep user data private. Tech companies are concerned about the misuse of data access for spying or for being exploited by hackers, while governments want data access to track possible threats and solve crimes. Legislation regarding encryption could force tech companies to add a “backdoor” to their devices and sites that would give governments (and potentially hackers) easy access to user information.

Student hackers are an increasing threat when it comes to infiltrating K-12 school networks, says John Mullen of SonicWall. In a recent article in EdTech online, he writes, “While external cybercriminals seek Social Security numbers and financial information using ransomware, student hackers commit inside jobs with the hope of changing grades, stealing passwords, infecting computers with malware, accessing or hijacking secure school or district websites or even posting inappropriate image”. He also shares several steps that schools can take to help protect their networks from student hackers, including compliance with the Children's Internet Protection Act.

Children's data, including Social Security numbers, is increasingly being sold on the dark web, according to research from Terbium Labs, a Baltimore-based dark web data intelligence company. In her detailed commentary regarding the dark web market, researcher Emily Wilson points out that children's data can be used to commit fraud because most people are not checking their babies and children’s credit reports. Facebook has also been recently charged for their negligence with child data, including the use of a research app to spy on minors and turning a blind eye to so-called “friendly fraud”.

Cyberbullying victims are at greater risk of drug and alcohol use, poor school attendance and performance, low self-esteem, and suicide, UNICEF warns as it marked Safer Internet Day recently. A new UNESCO report confirms that violence and school bullying remain a global problem. The UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said in a press release “"We've heard from children and young people from around the globe and what they are saying is clear: the Internet has become a kindness desert."

Nearly once every three days, a US school district is victimized by a cyberattack (ransomware, phishing, denial of service and unauthorized disclosures or data breaches), states a report released recently by Doug Levin, president of EdTech Strategies and discussed in EdSurge . Levin predicts that such incidents could become more common, adding that they disrupt teaching and learning and cost districts as much as $100,000 to address. Levin predicts this will continue because “There’s no easy solution. It’s not just that we need more money, different policies or more training. The nature of these threats is going to keep changing. And if major companies—Equifax, Apple, Cisco, Facebook—can’t keep a handle on their stuff, what chance do little school districts have?”

Thinking about giving up Facebook? A new study that evaluated users deactivating their accounts says that giving it up could give you more in-person time with friends and family, but less political knowledge. A small bump in one’s daily moods and life satisfaction was also observed and, for the average Facebook user, an extra hour a day of downtime. Critics say the effects may be different for different age groups, particularly teens.

Wish you hadn’t sent that? Facebook has finally made good on its promise to let users unsend chats after TechCrunch discovered Mark Zuckerberg had secretly retracted some of his Facebook Messages from recipients. Recently Facebook Messenger globally rolled out “Remove for everyone” to help you pull back typos, poor choices, embarrassing thoughts or any other message. For up to 10 minutes after sending a Facebook Message, the sender can tap on it and they’ll find the delete button has been replaced by “Remove for you,” but there’s now also a “Remove for everyone” option that pulls the message from recipients’ inboxes. They’ll see an alert that you removed a message in its place, and can still flag the message to Facebook, which will retain the content briefly to see if it’s reported. The feature could make people more comfortable having honest conversations or using Messenger for flirting since they can second-guess what they send, but it won’t let people change ancient history.

Should schools install facial recognition tech? As schools plan to spend billions on security equipment and services, EdSurge’s Emily Tate says that improvements like facial recognition systems such as SAFR (Secure, Accurate Facial Recognition) tend to make school staff feel safer, but she questions the effectiveness. In her article, she reports that experts say having a high tech system often leads to people letting their guard down and putting their faith in a system that needs constant updating, and input is not going to prevent the worst case scenarios that all too common.

Not one state earned a perfect score for their student-data privacy protections on a new report card released by The Parent Coalition for Student Privacy and the Network for Public Education. The highest grade awarded, a B, went to Colorado, while three states—New Hampshire, New York, and Tennessee—received the second-highest average grade of "B-." Eleven states received an "F." These states include Alabama, Alaska, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Carolina, Vermont and Wisconsin. Each state was graded on seven categories, which include transparency, parental and student rights, limits on commercial use of data, and enforcement. Do you know how your children’s educational data is stored and shared?