Millions of students in Canada and around the world had their personal information sent to advertisers and data brokers when governments made an abrupt switch to online learning during the pandemic, according to a new report that reveals safety gaps in educational technology.
[…]
CBC Kids, an educational website run by Canada’s public broadcaster, is used as a global case study in the [Human Rights Watch] report, because of how particularly “egregious” the site was in its data-collection practices.
It’s a long report, so I’ve pulled a few paragraphs that stand out.
Across the country, when COVID-19 swept onto Canadian shores in March, 2020, students were forced into online classrooms. Governments turned to educational apps and websites. This gave international corporations that produce this technology an opportunity to tap into the habits of a young captive audience for an extended period of time.
These companies began to collect personal data from children, according to HRW’s research and findings. This included information about who children were, where they were located, what they did in their classrooms, who their family members and friends were and what kinds of devices their caregivers could afford to buy them. If a student searched for something online, doodled on a virtual whiteboard or visited a non-school-related website, that data could be collected.
Most of this was done through tracking technology built into or included with educational apps and websites. With these techniques, which are commonly used by online marketers to build profiles of customers, some educational platforms were able to trail children outside of their virtual classrooms and across the internet, HRW found.
Other ways of collecting children’s data included invisibly tagging them, so that their digital trail was difficult to get rid of. This tracking technique, which is also often used on commercial websites, is particularly invasive when applied to students, HRW said. It works by drawing hidden shapes and text on a webpage that can be connected to a unique numeric identifier for a user’s device. Users cannot eliminate this type of tracking through any ad-blocking software, or by adjusting their web browser privacy settings.
[…]
According to the findings, CBC Kids used 29 trackers to collect data and sent it to 20 advertising companies. CBC Kids also used 15 third-party cookies to send further data to nine advertising technology companies, HRW found. That’s more than five times the median number of cookies and more than four times the median number of trackers installed on the world’s most popular websites.
In its privacy policy, CBC Kids says, “The vast majority of the information you create doesn’t have any indicator of who you are, personally.” But HRW found that CBC Kids had been sending children’s data to companies that publicly say they connect people’s offline identity records to their online activities.
One would think that a report this explosive would merit a stronger headline.
CeeBeeCee needs some serious defunding.
Its just too bad that it is not gonna happen.
Ever.
Sincerely hope that I are wrong.
More Liberal funding for the morally bankrupt CBC. That’s obviously the answer. If they had more public funding, then they wouldn’t have to worry about seeking advertisers (sarcasm off)
Let me rewrite that headline for you
CBC used kids
Your welcome
“CBC Kids used 29 trackers” btw these are just apps installed on the devices of those tracked. Question is: how many devices out there had these tracking apps installed without knowledge?
Oh and license for CBC as media entity should be revoked TODAY pending further investigation.
But of course nothing will happen in Dear Leader’s Canadastan.
Sharing personal information about children. Is groomer on the QWERTY flag yet? I bet groomer got that database.
Speaking of this, why the deafening SDA radio silence on the 19 children murdered in yet another mass shooting in the good ole US of A?
It’s a tragedy- what else do you want us to say?
If you want emotion, go somewhere else.
The shooter was a Hispanic tranny. Was that what you were looking to hear?
It shouldn’t be surprising that when a man pumps himself full of toxic levels of estrogen and anti-depressants, that symptoms of severe and potentially dangerous mental illness will manifest.
Daniel.
1000% bang on.
Compliments of the deranged left and their constant WOKE BS.
Daniel
i got a two day ban from facebook for pointing that out . not even on a news site/ a private page/ they were waiting for it .
Terrible tragedy that mass shootings are up 100% under Biden from the Trump years. Libs kill kids before and after birth
44 were murdered in Chicago this May alone…there’s your silence.
Gee Mitch,maybe because some of us have noticed,that 3 days to 3 weeks after the accusatory headlines,actual facts become available.
Why should our hostess jump to your agenda?
I wonder how many times the Child Killer had been reported to the FBI?
“He was on our watch list”???
Strange thing,this mass murder,the lengths the crazy went to,to find a place in Texas,where his victims could not shoot back..
So is it crazy?
Or is it coached?
Lesson appears to be,”Nowhere is safe”when “The Government protects you”.
Home school or teach your kids armed response from age 5?
As for CBC spying on children?
Thats what pedophiles do.
If all truckers are racist nasties,then by same logic all CBC staff are perverts..
Too easy being “progressive”.
Too bad the shooter didn’t get you as well. The world needs less leftard trolls of your sort.
The CBC is Pravda and will be the only news agency standing after Bill C-11 passes.
No one gives a f***.
If families are using CBC to educate their kids I am disinclined to worry about them being tracked, I am sure they all enjoyed the messaging from public health, govt of canaduh, pfizer, telus, maybe even RCMP etc. (speculation on my part, but I doubt I am wrong)
Families who understand the serious threats of tracking should already have a VPN in place.