Google Accused of Mining Student Data in Class-Action Suit; Denies Charges
Google was hit with a class-action complaint Monday alleging the company's education products secretly harvest mass amounts of student information and data without their or their parents’ knowledge or consent.
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“Google’s massive data-harvesting apparatus exposes children to serious and irreversible risks to their privacy, property, and autonomy, and harms them in ways that are both concealed and profound,” said the complaint. “To be effective, an agreement must be supported by informed, voluntary consent by a person with authority to do so in exchange for sufficient consideration. None of those elements are met here.”
Filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern California, case 25-03125 was brought by a group of parents who argue Google has violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), among other federal and state laws.
The parents said that “schools have always collected certain personal information about students, and they must be able to continue to do so—within the bounds of the law.” The complaint goes on to say that “until recently, that collection was transparent and limited: parents generally knew what information was collected, by whom, and for what purpose,” but the times and the technology have changed.
"These accusations are false,” said a Google spokesperson Thursday. “None of the information collected in Workspace for Education services is ever used for targeted advertising, and we have strong controls to protect student data and require schools to obtain parental consent when needed."