Tonya Riley reports:
The first updates to the Federal Trade Commission’s children’s privacy rules in more than a decade leave students and educators without stronger tools to protect their privacy.
The final rules unveiled Thursday, dropped an earlier proposal the FTC had floated to rein in educational technology providers.
The proposals would have barred ed tech companies from using kids’ data gained in educational settings for commercial purposes. They also would have also allowed ed tech providers to get consent from schools instead of parents in some circumstances, a proposal praised by educators and ed tech companies and criticized by some parent groups.
The agency said it declined to include those changes to avoid conflict with potential updates to the US Education Department’s Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act rules, which govern student data privacy.
Read more at Bloomberg.