Advancing Mass. School Privacy Bill Would Ban Targeted Ads, Profiling
A Massachusetts educational privacy bill advanced with revisions, the legislature’s website indicated on Monday. The Joint Education Committee cleared H-4405, which is a new draft of H-633, and sent it to the House Ways and Means Committee.
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Under H-4405, operators of websites or apps for K-12 schools would be barred from engaging in targeted advertising “if the targeting of the advertising is based on any information, including covered information and persistent unique identifiers, that the operator has acquired because of the use of that operator's site, service or application for K-12 school purposes.”
Additionally, the operator may not use that information “to amass a profile about a student or a teacher, principal or administrator except in furtherance of K-12 school purposes,” the bill says. Also, the proposed law would bar operators from selling or renting a student’s information, or from disclosing covered information, with some exceptions for each.
Among other requirements, the bill would force operators to maintain reasonable security practices and “immediately return or destroy covered information if requested by the educational entity or when covered information is no longer required for K-12 school purposes or other lawful purposes.”
The Joint Education Committee last month advanced a similar Senate bill (S-364) to the Senate Ways and Means Committee (see 2507250024).