Privacy Advocates Release Toolkit for Parents to Protect Student Data
The Parent Coalition for Student Privacy (PCSP) and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) earlier this week released a free, online toolkit that offers guidance to parents on how to protect their children’s personal information.
The two national organizations say that schools are increasingly outsourcing operations to vendors that store students’ personal data in the cloud and share that information with third parties. Therefore, “it’s more important than ever for parents to take some control over their children’s information,” according to the toolkit announcement.
“The Parent Toolkit for Student Privacy: A Practical Guide for Protecting Your Child’s Sensitive School Data from Snoops, Hackers and Marketers” encourages parent to be more proactive in questioning privacy terms set by vendors that their school district works with, offering advice on how to talk to the school and other tips. PCSP and CCFC cite the fact that data collected by schools and vendors can include their children’s names, birth dates, academic scores, browsing history and more, which can later be sold or hacked.
The toolkit was created in response to parents’ growing concerns over student data privacy, according to the announcement. Recently, popular education platforms like Edmodo and Schoolzilla have been attacked by cybercriminals, resulting in student data being exposed.
The toolkit is available free to parents on the CCFC and PCSP sites.
An infographic, released with the toolkit, can be found below.