Google is facing trouble in the United States. A privacy non-profit organization has filed a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission that accuses the tech behemoth of spying on children in the U.S.
The complaint particularly mentions Chromebooks, a line of cheap laptops running Google-made software, that is being used by more than half of K-12 students across the U.S. Around the world, The Washington Post reported, that 50 million children and teachers are using programs from the Mountain View company.
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Chromebooks has a 'Sync' feature that is tracking and collecting information including the websites the student visits, links clicked, YouTube videos watched, terms typed on the search engine, and even passwords saved using Google Chrome Browser. The non-profit organization alleges that the search engine company is using this information by creating profiles and pushing 'targeted ads' not strictly about education to students.
Moreover, the privacy watchdog claimed that the multi-billion-dollar company has violated the Student Privacy Pledge which Google signed a promise to not collect or share student records except when authorized for educational purposes. Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc., and 200 other companies signed the pledge to protect children against online espionage.
"Despite publicly promising not to, Google mines students' browsing data and other information, and uses it for the company's own purposes," said Nate Cardozo, EFF Staff Attorney, on a press release. "Minors should not be tracked or use as guinea pigs, with their data treated as a profit center."
Cardozo added that if Google wants to "improve" its services by collecting user data from Google Apps for Education (GAFE), the company must first ask permission from parents.
Jonathan Rochelle, the director for GAFE, wrote on Blogspot that the company is "firmly committed" to uphold the privacy and security especially of children's personal information online. That said, Google is confident that none of the programs provided to children is in violation of the Student Privacy Pledge. Rochelle added that educators and administrators can always manually choose which information can be synced in the settings menu or completely disable the feature from Chrome.
