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Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it

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Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it

#32
post #18

If it's not too late, return it to where you got it. Then tell the school district that they have to pay for computers that they control. > Does anyone know how to refer these people to law enforcement for prosecution? You call the police. However, don't expect them to do anything and you won't be disappointed when they don't. You can then call the city/county DA and get the same treatment. The state's attorney will…

..and if those offices doing nothing to help you isn’t enough, there are plenty of other government agencies/services which will also do nothing for you

you can also try contacting Google, who will bend over backwards to make sure not to do anything for you.

Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it

#34

As a longtime armchair attorney who has closely read summaries of cases like this on Slashdot for well over the past decade (IANAL, BTW)...you could go the lawyer route but this basically amounts to your kid being a minor in school which means they don't have full legal rights, and the interpretation of 4A is likely up in the air here anyway. Constitutional rights don't necessarily apply at school or anywhere near sc…

Nit: I think it's "Bong Hits 4 Jesus."

Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it

#35

related support ticket from someone trying to log into device w/ work account without inheriting workplace MDM policy https://support.google.com/chromebook/thread/117916330/how-t... > Even if the Chromebook is your private device and your owner account is your private @gmail.com account, once you sign in with a managed account, even using a separate profile, the managed account polices become active. > This is NOT a…

The ending of that post (trimmed above) is also important:

> So you can boot into your personal account and do your personal business and then reboot into your business acount and do your business' business, but never the twain shall meet.

Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it

#36

As a longtime armchair attorney who has closely read summaries of cases like this on Slashdot for well over the past decade (IANAL, BTW)...you could go the lawyer route but this basically amounts to your kid being a minor in school which means they don't have full legal rights, and the interpretation of 4A is likely up in the air here anyway. Constitutional rights don't necessarily apply at school or anywhere near sc…

Actually....

It's the poster's Chromebook. They has revoked authorization for the school to deploy $software on their machine.

Next step is the public school supplying a spyware'd laptop and NOT imstalling spyware on said parent's chromebook, but also said private chromebook not being used for school stuff.

If you want the district to not install spyware... Well... Lets just say, the poster is probably pissing in the wind in my experience.

Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it

#37

Easy, wipe the system and install Linux on it.

Another little push in the right direction: you'll have to go into developer mode to expose the shell and flip the write-protect bit.

Could it possibly be impossible to enter developer mode?

If so, could it be possible to somehow flip the write protect bit "by hand"?

Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it

#38

As a longtime armchair attorney who has closely read summaries of cases like this on Slashdot for well over the past decade (IANAL, BTW)...you could go the lawyer route but this basically amounts to your kid being a minor in school which means they don't have full legal rights, and the interpretation of 4A is likely up in the air here anyway. Constitutional rights don't necessarily apply at school or anywhere near sc…

On the flip side of that "minors have no rights" coin you're holding up is the fact that laptop is the parent's property since they bought the laptop for the child to use. They did a factory reset and the problem software still remains. What if the parent did a factory reset to use the laptop for themselves? There is no reason for the spyware to remain in that case. It needs to be removable.

Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it

#39
post #10

Why did you buy him the Chromebook versus the district?

Yes. The district should supply the Chromebook for school work. They will manage that as they see fit. If he wants to do other stuff with a Chromebook, he should have a separate Chromebook and separate Google account. Ultimately that's easier and safer than constantly logging in and out of two different accounts on one machine anyway.

I am not a parent, but this seems like a good practice to get a child in the habit of, anyway: separating out your devices for work and school. Much like I wouldn't log into personal Slack groups on my work laptop (I learned that lesson!), I wouldn't try to conduct personal work on a school laptop.

Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it

#40

> I bought him a Chromebook for schoolwork, but also for other private things. When we logged in, the system installed GoGuardian monitoring software on the Chromebook without notice or permission. Can you give more details? Logged in to what? I don't know how Chromebooks work, but I take your description to mean logged into a webpage, which allowed it to install arbitrary software on your computer - this sounds like…

>Edit: On rereading the post, I suppose you mean logged in to Google Classroom.

Oh, if only. They mean logged into ChromeOS with a Google account.

There is an option to log in as a Guest, but the machine is so unbelievably gimped in Guest mode I can't imagine anyone actually using it like that permanently.

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