>Does anyone know how to refer these people to law enforcement for prosecution?
Like, filling a lawsuit, or reporting them to the police? I mean, how else would that happen?
Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
321–330 of 442 posts
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#322> 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 he…
> 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. Just some comments on the political aspect of this, since the HN crowd tends to not be so good at that part: - Following this advice and using a tone that even resembles the tone of the comment…
Bring this concern to the school board: Say your child is making homework all alone, in their room, total privacy. Is it true that the monitoring software can at that moment look at the webcam and listen in to the microphone's audio? If no consent was given, that should be pretty bad for the school board.
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#323Send them a copy of "1984" or, i am not familiar with chromebooks, set a bios/boot-password or something so if they want install anything, they have to ask for permission.
I kinda find it helpless to monitor kids activities instead of talking to them, explaining where the dangers are.
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Following this advice and using a tone that even resembles the tone of the comment or the original post will make you look/sound crazy. Thank you. Also, please ignore every comment in this thread suggesting you lawyer up or go to small claims court. The laptop isn't ruined and can be reset whenever the OP wants (as they already established). If you go in guns blazing to the school board, the school is going to go i…
> If you go in guns blazing to the school board, the school is going to go into full defensive mode. Once you've established yourself as the aggressive parent with an axe to grind, they're not going to be interested at all in working with you. Too bad! They can be voted out, or face lawsuits if a heated attitude is too much for them that they feel the need to ignore valid feedback regardless of the emotions involved.…
>Too bad! They can be voted out, or face lawsuits if a heated attitude is too much for them that they feel the need to ignore valid feedback regardless of the emotions involved.
Only the world doesn't magically grants wishes to Kens and Karens, just because they feel strongly about something and how right they are. The person taking that board to court or trying to vote them out could just as trivially lose.
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#325My wife used my laptop for her work as a teacher, all of a sudden the system forces her to change her password! And I'm like what? That's not Krebs approved! Turns out is was her school's sys admin using some o365 settings (or at least I assume it was.)
I told her to tell her director that this type of control over personal hardware is not acceptable, and this year they got school issued laptops, so that is nice.
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest thing is that if you are calling to complain, then you will IMMEDIATELY be discredited. They don't have any reason to keep you happy, so complaints mean absolutely nothing. You cannot come with complaints - you must come with a solution, already prepared, such that it is easier for them to implement the solution than to not. People will always, 100% of the time, take the path of least resistance - actuall…
It seems like the path of least resistance here is “only use school equipment to access school accounts”, create the kid a non-school Google account, and only use non-school accounts (his and others) on the private Chromebook. I find it annoying but acceptable that my work account doesn’t function on my non-work computer.
I find the behavior as implemented entirely unacceptable. My work has Google apps and that caused a Chromebook I was using to immediately jump to managed by the company as soon as I logged in with my work account despite having no intranet/etc and no one intentionally configuring anything. It would never allow me to do regular processes for the chromebook's management even after full resets.
The whole point of a restricted boot environment is to have multi user with proper separation where one user can't accidentally compromise the system. If an org is still unhappy mixing with other accounts or being on user provided hardware they should be able to block that. Stealing hardware and implementing anti-theft rules that should apply to verified org provided hardware on first login is a crime.
Years ago, I debated Chromebooks as a solution for older relatives. Now I shudder to think what would have happened if I had and one of their nieces/nephews or grandkids had something to show them from school.
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#327I find this stuff so disheartening. It's like, "how early can we indoctrinate kids into being comfortable being watched and having their every move tracked?" I don't even care what the justifications are. Preventing cheating? Before everyone had personal computers and the internet, people could just copy each others' work. This kind of crap is fundamentally a violation of students' right to privacy. They deserve to g…
Primarily these types of software's are used for safeguarding purposes. For alerting teaching staff about children who are being abused, bullied or at risk of self harm etc.
I think a better lesson would be here that if you use an account that's not managed by you, it may be used to install software that you disagree with. This is a good lesson for using IT in the workplace. OP shouldn't expect his son's school provided account to maintain privacy when he's using it, because schools have statutory responsibilities to look after the safety of their students.
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
On a Windows account, a user can change the default browser for their own account. Therefore, a user can delegate the choice of default browser to the remote management. A user can record which sites their own browser visits. Therefore, a user can delegate that authority, allowing remote management to record which sites that user visits. A user does not have the authority to record which sites are visited by another…
On Windows, settings and software can be enrolled remotely the moment you hook your machine up to an MDM portal, just like on chromeOS. Windows doesn't include some of the functionality ChromeOS includes, but your employer can definitely manage settings like your standard browser if they choose to. The can also enforce that all software you run is signed, is run from specific locations on the system that you may no longer have access to and they enable Bitlocker with a specific backup key.
Most companies either choose not to implement any of this, or simply do not know they can implement this. Do not sign into your personal devices with your work account on anything but an isolated browser (modern Windows has a sandbox built in!) or you might discover the hard way what kind of possibilities remote AD allows for.
Windows does prompt you to accept that the account can manage your device, but so does ChromeOS. Denying MDM may cause the login to fail if they automatically rescind any tokens that don't get MDM access on your device.
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest thing is that if you are calling to complain, then you will IMMEDIATELY be discredited. They don't have any reason to keep you happy, so complaints mean absolutely nothing. You cannot come with complaints - you must come with a solution, already prepared, such that it is easier for them to implement the solution than to not. People will always, 100% of the time, take the path of least resistance - actuall…
It seems like the path of least resistance here is “only use school equipment to access school accounts”, create the kid a non-school Google account, and only use non-school accounts (his and others) on the private Chromebook. I find it annoying but acceptable that my work account doesn’t function on my non-work computer.
Having seen the absolutely atrocious screens in the school furnished chromebooks I half believe Vtech put higher res screens in their 90's kids laptops.
Re: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
#330> I did a full factory reset, signed in to his account again, and now the system is once again locked down.
Sign in with another account, problem solved.