Privacy

Does your school or district use a digital safety platform to monitor student communications? Jim Gray, executive director of teaching and learning at Vancouver Public Schools in Washington State, writes that he thinks there are ways for schools to use student safety platforms to help develop students into better digital citizens. In a blog post, Gray offers five strategies, including sharing with students (and their parents) that students’ online communication and actions are monitored. He also advocates that schools and parents turn questionable decisions in online communications into learning opportunities rather than "gotcha" moments.

An investigative report by New York regulators revealed that several high-profile Twitter accounts were hijacked this summer using only basic social engineering techniques because Twitter has poor internal security controls. The regulators recommended creating an oversight council with a qualified regulator to monitor and supervise popular social media platforms' security practices. This report may foreshadow more government scrutiny of social media, but also is a reminder to everyone that social media accounts are easy to hijack for nefarious purposes.

Imagine a day when Siri or Alexa might be able to let you know you have a cold -- or something worse -- coming on. Researchers are working on a tool that leverages machine learning to detect irregularities in a person's voice that can be linked to certain ailments. The "diagnosis" isn't designed to be definitive, just more of a nudge to seek additional medical care. Privacy concerns abound, but a tool like this makes sense. Who/What has a better gauge on your current health? A doctor you haven't seen in months, or a virtual assistant that can track your movements, monitor your sleep and listen to your every cough and sneeze?

Private information of students in the Clark County, Nev., school district was released after the district did not pay a ransomware demand. Ransomware is a form of malware where hackers demand ransom for access to data that, in this case, a school district holds. It can have a devastating impact on businesses and individuals alike. The information included students' Social Security numbers and grades. Brett Callow, a threat analyst for cybersecurity company Emsisoft, says multiple school districts have fallen victim to similar schemes. Does your district have a plan for handling a ransomware attack?

A recent survey from the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) reports that the the majority of parents feel the technology provides key benefits to education, including communication and learning support. The survey, conducted this summer, found that data privacy was a "mid- to low-level" concern among parents, outweighed by the quality of their children's education. Yet many parents surveyed said they are not aware of the legal rights for protecting their child’s data privacy, nor of the technology plans in place in their child’s school or district. 

“Parents see themselves as responsible for children’s privacy, even though they report feeling ill-equipped to manage it,” says Elizabeth Laird, senior fellow of student privacy for the Washington, D.C.-based CDT. However, Laird notes, the legal framework in education does not allow for any control or input from parents. Schools are the ones legally responsible for protecting student data.  Further, the more parents learn about student data privacy, the more concerned they become, the survey found. And parents of elementary school-aged children, African-American parents, Hispanic parents and those with higher incomes report higher overall concern for this issue than other parents. Interested in finding out more about what responsibility schools have for preserving students’ data privacy? Check out this primer on the key points of the Family Educational Rights And Privacy Act (FERPA).

With remote learning, school districts are reporting more ransomware attacks. Brett Callow, a threat analyst for Emsisoft, says the cybercriminals are changing tactics, threatening to publish employee’s private information online and demanding amounts more than $150,000 instead of just a few thousand dollars

The Insider Intelligence U.S. Digital Trust Survey found that, ranking nine social platforms, consumers have the most faith in LinkedIn when it comes to security, community, ad experience and relevance and overall legitimacy. Pinterest earned the second spot, followed respectively by Snapchat, Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Facebook.

Many schools are requiring that students have their webcams on for remote learning, but some kids would benefit from a relaxed policy, some educators and parents say. Students can view themselves as well as their classmates and may become self-conscious, for example, and may be better able to focus with the camera off, asserts Erika Bocknek, a Wayne State University associate professor of educational psychology. This web cam approach to learning may be keeping kids safe from getting COVID-19, but it doesn’t come without its own set of new concerns, including privacy, equity and bullying.

No one wants to imagine that a predator will contact your child. But it's also something we need to prep our kids for if they're going to be online. How do you start that conversation? Check out this list of conversation starters and possible answers to kid’s questions. For example:

Ask your teen: What should you do if someone you don't know contacts you online?

Best answers:

• I wouldn't respond to them at all. 
• If they were persistent, I'd type, "I don't want to talk to you. Do not contact me again." 
• If they continued, I'd block them and report their user information and wouldn't respond anymore.

Facebook plans to start globally blocking or removing any content that poses increased regulatory or legal risk beginning October 1, 2020 as part of its amended terms of service. The rule stems from a proposed law in Australia forcing the social platform to pay media firms for articles but is being enforced globally, marking a departure from CEO Mark Zuckerberg's stance on the importance of free speech. It will be interesting to see if this new stance will have any effect on cyberbullying complaints as well.