Sorry bub, but this is America. We don’t have rights and other commie nonsense like that.
Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
101–110 of 442 posts
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#102Possibly related-- does the Church of Satan hold an official position on vendor lock-in? :)
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#103Good lord, just call the CPS IT helpdesk. Problem solved.
Didn't know they existed. Just called them. They said "no, it cannot be removed". They suggested signing in with a different account, but when I do that, I get the error message "This account is not allowed to sign in within this network."
Ask them for an administrative hearing. 99% chance they won't and will just remove it.
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#104I haven't used a Chromebook before because I've always suspected this kind of malfeasance is inevitable, but I wonder... Could you just rip out the disk device (nvme/etc) and shove a blank one in there? As long as you never used the backdoored Google account again, at least you could re-use the device for other purposes (albeit with a different OS most likely). Not optimal I agree, but could that be a viable option?…
Its been a few years since Chromebooks have had swappable disks. There used to be some high priced models that supported user upgrades but then the OEMs figured out that no one wants to spend a fortune on a Chromebook so everything is soldered in now. Since what is being installed isn't actually malware but just some enterprise spyware, the easiest solution is to just wipe it, log in as a user unassociated with the school, and then add the school account. The spyware won't be running on the unassociated account. Kids have always had their 4th amendment rights encroached upon in schools and clearly this school district is extending that to their devices in this manner, for better or for worse.
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#105You are going to spend a lot of time and money to address this. Better solution is to buy a second Chromebook only for school or personal use snd explain to your kid that their government hates them.
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#106[deleted]
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#107Did you ever consent to the GoGuardian monitoring of your student?
I'd probably wireshark it and see if it's sending out data - especially on other users than your kid.
That moves this from "The school installed invasive but allowable anti-cheating software" to "The school is monitoring my family without consent" which is a more interesting avenue.
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#108> I did a full factory reset, signed in to his account again, and now the system is once again locked down. That’s by design though isn’t it? You logged in with a managed account and the policy was applied again? The account is his school account right? That’s pretty much how Chrome OS works. This might just be a good lesson that you want to maintain device / role boundaries.
> That’s pretty much how Chrome OS works. And that's the problem. Signing onto a remote account is a request to access a remote resource, and should not be interpreted as granted the remote actor control over local resources. That Chrome OS works this way implies that Chrome OS is fundamentally flawed.
Isnt this the same way Windows works? If I sign into a work Windows account and they want to set my default browser or something, thats absolutely something they can do. ChromeOS isnt doing something particularly new in that regard.
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#109> I did a full factory reset, signed in to his account again, and now the system is once again locked down.
> So now I'm in the position where I have to ask permission from a local government entity to please let me install stuff and don't monitor the computer I bought and paid for.
I don't understand, this sounds like an issue with the account, not with the Chromebook.
Does this spyware persist on this device even if you sign into a different account?
If you look at third-party apps in the account settings, can you delete this one?
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are completely failing to grasp the level of tyranny here. Schools these days often will not accept non-Chromebook devices.
I'm curious on how they enforce that
Simply by using some application for things like online test taking that only works on ChromeOS. If you can't afford to buy a Chromebook, you may be eligible to receive one free from the school.
Even in college, we had a freshman year computer requirement where we had to have a Tablet PC. Freshman engineering classes all used a Windows-only handwriting application for class participation. The Tablet PCs they sold at the time were expensive and crappy. Luckily the application worked in Wine somehow and you could get by using a cheap Wacom tablet so that's what I did. I sold the Wacom to another freshman so they could do the same. Eventually I bought a used Thinkpad tablet PC because I actually liked handwriting my notes and homework but I hated the fact I was almost forced to.