New Mexico Sues Google Over Children's Data Privacy
February 20 2020 - 6:44PM
Dow Jones News
By Yoree Koh
New Mexico sued Alphabet Inc.'s Google, alleging that the
internet giant knowingly spies on students and their families
through its Google Education platform.
The state says Google has used the platform to circumvent
privacy laws and gain access to children's personal data and
movements online, according to a complaint filed Thursday in
federal court in Albuquerque.
According to the lawsuit, Google collected troves of personal
information including students' physical locations, visits to
websites, internet searches, videos viewed on YouTube, contact
lists, voice recordings and saved passwords, among other
details.
"These claims are factually wrong," Google spokesman Jose
Castaneda said in an emailed statement. "G Suite for Education
allows schools to control account access and requires that schools
obtain parental consent when necessary. We do not use personal
information from users in primary and secondary schools to target
ads," he said.
The lawsuit is the latest challenge to Google's data-collection
practices amid broader criticism by lawmakers, regulators and
others of the company's efforts to protect user privacy,
particularly regarding children. Federal law prohibits companies
from collecting data on children under 13 without parental
consent.
In September, YouTube, also owned by Alphabet, agreed to pay a
$170 million fine to the Federal Trade Commission, without
admitting wrongdoing, to settle allegations that it tracked
internet activity for children to sell ads for products.
Google has captured about 60% of the school device market,
according to Futuresource Consulting, by distributing its low-cost
Chromebooks. The budget laptops are a gateway to a Google world:
They house its education platform, run on its Chrome operating
system and are loaded with the Chrome web browser. The laptops
introduce students to the company's products starting as early as
kindergarten. The Google Education platform is a suite of free
tools for schools that include Google-powered email, cloud storage
and calendar.
"Student safety should be the number-one priority of any company
providing services to our children, particularly in schools," New
Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas said in a statement.
The lawsuit alleges that while Google has positioned its
education platform "as a benign tool that is an answer to
resource-deprived schools nationwide," the company secretly uses it
to monitor children's online activity even at home and on their
personal devices.
The state says in its complaint that Google violates the
Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, by not allowing
parents to review or limit what data the platform collects and uses
and that the company "conditions use of its product" through
far-reaching data collection.
Google allegedly does this by encouraging students to use their
Google Education login information to access their Google accounts
-- including on personal computers, mobile devices and
school-issued Chromebooks -- the state says in the complaint. Once
students are logged in, a function called Chrome Sync turns on
automatically, letting Google collect students' Chrome usage data
-- from web searches to passwords -- in its servers, the complaint
says.
The state worked with an analytics team that has conducted
forensic testing and "identified this data being transmitted," said
Brian McMath, an assistant attorney general in the state's consumer
and environmental protection division.
Students and parents can opt out of allowing Google to read the
data, but the lawsuit alleges that option is buried in settings
where parents likely never see it.
Common Sense Media, a San-Francisco based children's advocacy
group, applauded the move.
"Students and parents are a vulnerable audience who have little
say in what products kids must use, and companies are taking
advantage of them, " said James P. Steyer, chief executive and
founder of the nonprofit organization. "We have long had a law in
place, COPPA, to protect kids' data, and it is important that state
leaders like AG Balderas step up to protect children," he said.
This isn't Mr. Balderas's first legal tussle with Google. In
September 2018, his office filed a similar lawsuit against Google
and other tech companies for allegedly collecting data from
child-directed mobile apps. The companies have denied wrongdoing
and the case is pending.
Write to Yoree Koh at yoree.koh@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 20, 2020 18:29 ET (23:29 GMT)
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