If you want to be even more upset, if you log into Chrome with this account on a “real” computer, I bet it will download and install a bunch of Chrome extensions without asking, too. It certainly did on my daughter’s PC when we were using it during the pandemic.
Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
111–120 of 442 posts
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#112Not entirely familiar with Chrome OS but if you log out of the school account and into a personal one instead, does this monitoring persist?
Regardless, this is pretty much the perfect example that RMS was extremely prescient about free software and the distinction between freedom and free beer (or a Google account in this case).
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#113As 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.
The most pragmatic thing to do is probably acquire another school only Chromebook. Either have one issued from the school or buy another one. This is probably a worthwhile lesson for how to treat personal and employer assets separately anyway.
The work to try to get the school to make the software removable is a laudable stand for citizens, parent, and student rights - but would come at some cost of time, money (more than buying a second chromebook anyway), and maybe strained relationships with school officials.
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#114If you want to be even more upset, if you log into Chrome with this account on a “real” computer, I bet it will download and install a bunch of Chrome extensions without asking, too. It certainly did on my daughter’s PC when we were using it during the pandemic.
Wow that's annoying. Especially the "without asking" part!
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#115I would do the factory reset again and then not use that account anymore. If you want, you can create a new local-only account and then (this is the important part) sign in to the school Google Classroom on another browser . Install Firefox, Brave, something, and use it for the school account rather than Chrome. Chrome allows extensions installed to it to run in the background and manage the system, but another brows…
> create a new local-only account I thought you couldn't do that on a Chromebook.
i don't think you can. I had one of these chromebooks too, which I paid for. But my school did not want to remove the 'school policy' so now it's locked and even
other accounts are 'watched' and managed by the school's policy. Last time I tried to create an account it wouldn't let you create it unless you provided an email.
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#116> I bought him a Chromebook for schoolwork, but also for other private things. When we logged in...
This is why you need to pay attention to the technology choices that you make, and that your schools make. Chromebooks are designed from the ground up to be locked-down dystopian spyware once you "log in" to them with a specific Google account. For heaven's sake stop buying any more Chromebooks.
The correct solution here is not technological at all. Call into the school's board meeting during public comment, and make it loud and clear that the school is installing spyware on students' Chromebooks. Share your technical credentials and the method by which you found this. Emphasize stories of previous data breaches involving educational companies [1], and show officials that they are putting students' sensitive data at risk. (Edit: See the important point in the reply from 'n8cpdx below about the correct tone to use in your comments – don't repeat my words verbatim!)
The technical details don't matter too much to educational officials – as soon as the "Chromebook = bad spyware" label sticks and they think that a fuck-up here could cost them them bad press, they will allow their IT department to make more privacy-respecting technology choices even when those choices cost a little more. If no one speaks up, it's a race to the bottom driving us closer to the fiction in The Right to Read [2].
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[1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/22/smarterselect-exposed-mill...
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 IANAL, either. Just because the student is a minor, I don't see how that gives the school the right to pwn a private laptop (were the laptop a school laptop, my opinion would be different here); at best, this would seem to be the parent's machine, or right to decide, at…
Probably a Google account sign on. If I sign into my work Google account on my androids chrome it basically forces you to install spyware so our IT team can suck up my browser history. It sounds like chrome os takes this approach and adds steroids.
This is why people should be issued a work phone (or children a school laptop in the case of the OP) if the IT department is going to request control of it.
A while ago my company eventually decided to enable security settings for Microsoft Outlook, Teams etc on all mobile devices (the wipe phone on demand option). All that happened was everyone without a company phone uninstalled Teams and used WhatsApp instead.
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prosecute for what, though? It's very common for school accounts to take over a chromebook until you remove their profile/perform factory reset. This sounds more like a Google issue for allowing this behavior in the first place.
It is not actually specific behavior to Google (while Android in general has the same property). History has seen many cases, even my old Nokia Lumia phone many years ago has similar properties when I logged in the organisational email and that granted them remote wipe and access rights. Also iPhones have ”organizational control”, which can be set by certain configuration profiles, to track users. Companies have had…
Apple said in one of their WWDC keynotes somewhere that because use of personal devices for work was so common, Apple was going to sandbox and limit access to personal data after signing in to a work account - so the most work could do is erase their part of the device and not erase or touch the entire device. The idea being that if you bought the device and it wasn’t provisioned from work, then signing in with a work email should only ever affect your work accounts and apps that access them. But I might have the details wrong, haven’t looked into it in detail yet. The iOS feature is called “Account-Driven User Enrollment”, there’s a WWDC video on it from last year.
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#119OP you got to realize that what ever device you child logs into with his school issued google account will log all sorts of fun stuff.
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#120If the software were removable at all then students, who are more technologically literate than their parents would simply remove the spy software.
Student removal would defeat the purpose of the spy software.