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The EFF claims that Google spies on school kids

Despite signing a legally binding agreement not to at the start of the year.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a complaint alleging that Google is being a bit creepy when it comes to school kids' personal information. The search engine stands accused of data-mining the users of the Chromebooks that are handed out in schools as well as those using Google Apps for Education. It's doubly galling because, if true, Google has broken a promise that it made in January to not to exactly that. The firm, along with many others, signed the Student Privacy Pledge, barring it from vacuuming-up student data that wasn't for educational purposes.

Part of the controversy centers around the Sync feature that's baked into the Chrome browser, that's activated by default. As far as the EFF is concerned, that gives the search engine carte blanche to record every website visited, YouTube video played and even their saved passwords. It could be argued that Google indexing which Justin Bieber clip a pre-teen is watching in-between writing their term paper is a trivial matter. Then again, these children aren't able to consent for themselves, and their compliance in this matter has already been presumed.

Google has already told the EFF that it's going to disable the controls that let Chrome Sync data to be shared with the company on its school Chromebooks. The non-profit, however, doesn't consider that to be enough of a remedy. That's why it's lobbying the FTC to force the company to stop collecting search engine queries and other pieces of information that it would otherwise track. If the complaint is successful, regulators will have to get involved in yet another fight between tech companies and school boards.

Update: Google has posted a response.

[Image Credit: John Tlumacki/Boston Globe via Getty]