A school district responds to a lawsuit alleging that students were spied on in their own homes by district-issued laptops by saying that the surveillance was a security feature. Kreg Keizer reports: A suburban Philadelphia school district yesterday denied it spied on students by remotely activating the cameras on their school-issued MacBook laptops. In a…
Category: Youth & Schools
PA: Big Brother Is Here: Families Say Schools Snoop in Their Homes With District-Issued Laptops & Webcams (Updated)
Jeff Schreiber reports: A federal class action claims a suburban school district has been spying on students and families through the “indiscriminant use of and ability to remotely activate the webcams incorporated into each laptop issued to students,” without the knowledge or consent of students or parents. The named plaintiffs say they learned that Big…
Social networking sites failing to hide kids’ details, finds European Commission
The Commission analysed the policies of 22 social networking sites in a study aimed at finding out how well-protected under-18s were when using them as part of a campaign to urge young people to protect their information online. It said that just 40% of the sites they examined had default settings which hid the personal…
Facebook prank a lesson in privacy
Valerie Fortney writes: … Just last week, Canada’s privacy commissioner asked Facebook to change a number of policies and practices to comply with the country’s private-sector privacy law, and explain better how it handles personal information with third-party developers that create applications, such as games and quizzes. Such thoughts were on the mind of a…