Google Under Fire for Data-Mining Student Email Messages By Benjamin Herold | Education Week As part of a potentially explosive lawsuit making its way through federal court, the giant online-services provider Google has acknowledged scanning the contents of millions of email messages sent and received by student users of the company’s Apps for Education tool suite for schools. In the suit, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company also faces accusations from plaintiffs that it went further, crossing a “creepy line” by using information gleaned from the scans to build “surreptitious” profiles of Apps for Education users that could be used for such purposes as targeted advertising. - Read Full Article |
Is Google's Free Software a Good Deal for Educators?
By Anya Kamenetz | NPR
...Another big concern is commercialization and student privacy. As Yeskel has mentioned in other interviews, Google's business motive here is to expose young users to the Google brand. To hook them early.
Khaliah Barnes, director of the Student Privacy Project of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), warns, "When you're using free services, if you don't know what the product is, you are the product."
In March, as part of a federal lawsuit, Google admitted it had been data-mining student email messages to potentially improve its targeted advertising, among other reasons. - Read Full Article
By Anya Kamenetz | NPR
...Another big concern is commercialization and student privacy. As Yeskel has mentioned in other interviews, Google's business motive here is to expose young users to the Google brand. To hook them early.
Khaliah Barnes, director of the Student Privacy Project of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), warns, "When you're using free services, if you don't know what the product is, you are the product."
In March, as part of a federal lawsuit, Google admitted it had been data-mining student email messages to potentially improve its targeted advertising, among other reasons. - Read Full Article