New Mexico Sues Google Over Children’s Privacy Violations

Today, more than half of the nation’s public schools — and 90 million students and teachers globally — use free Google Education apps like Gmail and Google Docs. More than 25 million students and teachers also use Chromebooks, laptops that run on the company’s Chrome operating system, the lawsuit said.

In September, Google agreed to pay a $170 million fine to settle federal and New York State charges that it illegally harvested the personal data of children on YouTube.

The new lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, claimed that Google violated the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. The law requires companies to obtain a parent’s consent before collecting the name, contact information and other personal details from a child under 13.

The lawsuit also said Google deceived schools, parents, teachers and students by telling them that were no privacy concerns with its education products when, in fact, the company had amassed a trove of potentially sensitive details on students’ online activities and locations.

Jose Castaneda, a Google spokesman, said the lawsuit’s claims were “factually wrong.”

“G Suite for Education allows schools to control account access and requires that schools obtain parental consent when necessary,” he said in a statement. “We do not use personal information from users in primary and secondary schools to target ads.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/technology/new-mexico-google-lawsuit.html