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

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341–350 of 442 posts

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

#341

My son came home with a Chromebook and I'm trying my hardest to make him hate it by talking as much shit about it every chance I get. I made sure to get him a desktop with games, dual boot windows and ubuntu and stress that if there's anything he wants to do, we can do it.

What lesson are you teaching your child?

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

#342

If the school wants monitoring spyware, they should provide that, for example a computer to take tests or exams. Not taking over and control your own equipment. Talk to a lawyer and see if you can file a (digital ownership) theft report to the police.

I’m sure the Chicago PD will jump right on your “digital ownership” theft. They have the boys in the crime lab working shifts!

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

#343

I fought this with a suburban school system in Indiana and won. The spyware was installed on Chromebooks I bought. Before contacting the school, I monitored network traffic for about 1 HR and found a an ad fraud click bot and logging being sent to India. When I contacted the school my ask was they remove the spyware from my Chromebooks. The first answer was, no. I asked again via the superintendent, and got a call fr…

That's great for your situation - what about the rest of the people in your district? Did you reach out to other parents and make this problem known publicly, along with your solution, so that other parents could decide for themselves (individually or collectively) what their response should be? Seems like this would be a slam dunk of a local news piece for some newspaper/website.

I shared what happened with other parents. Most did not care or even understand.

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

#344
post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The laptop isn't ruined and can be reset whenever the OP wants (as they already established). I take it that it's fine that I install a microphone with a transmitter in your ceiling fixture so long as I do 't damage the fixture itself. > Don't immediately rush to assumptions of malicious intent Is there a good reason to doubt that the intended purpose for installing the software was to use its advertised functional…

If they thought the laptop was school property, then comparisons to wilful intrusion into someone’s house is hyperbolic, and no it wasn’t malicious. It would be more like if the cops had a valid warrant to track a suspects car, but installed the tracker in the wrong car by mistake. Best to establish the facts first.

> If they thought the laptop was school property, then comparisons to wilful intrusion into someone’s house is hyperbolic

So if you're renting an apartment from me, I am right to spy on your children with my ceiling bug?

> It would be more like if the cops had a valid warrant to track a suspects car, but installed the tracker in the wrong car by mistake.

The school is not a police force; nothing warrants their privacy intrusive surveillance of my children without my consent in the first place.

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

#345
After you reset the device but before you sign in with a school Google account, can you use a separate profile to install chrx or some other dual-boot Linux option? Or at least make sure the device has more than one Google Profile it can sign into?

At least then you'd be able to know the spyware profile wasn't running all the time. You son could use it only for the specific homework that requires it.

It's obviously still not OK that they can monitor everything he does while he's doing his homework, but it's an improvement on being able to monitor everything he does all the time, and (as much as I hate this) it might be an important lesson about what to expect when he's dealing company-provided devices in the future (though obviously a company controlling its own property is more justifiable than a school controlling your property).

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

#346
post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they thought the laptop was school property, then comparisons to wilful intrusion into someone’s house is hyperbolic, and no it wasn’t malicious. It would be more like if the cops had a valid warrant to track a suspects car, but installed the tracker in the wrong car by mistake. Best to establish the facts first.

Installing monitoring software (spyware) on a laptop that is owned by the school is legit only if you consider the student exactly that: a suspect. In that sense, your comment is spot-on. Following that logic, the act itself does not seem malicious. However, the logic of seeing students as suspects is.

That's fair, I'm not saying they are right to do it in that sense.

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

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other thing is add is the only way to impact the school system is to create an alternative (private or charter) or get your own people on the school board. Or if you’re really rich, hire a lawyer, but that’s kind of an %sshole move because then the school district has to either cave to everyone hiring a lawyer, or fire the music teacher to pay for legal defense.

School choice would do a lot of get schools to compete and be the best possible. Charter schools is something we use now. Hardly perfect but it’s a lot nicer.

Charter schools leave a lot of kids behind, especially if they have special needs.

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

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on this support thread [0], which was linked to by awinter-py's comment [1] elsewhere in the comments, it doesn't really matter which is first. Remote policies supersede any local controls, and can promote themselves to have Owner privileges. That this is the intended behavior, for any remote management to take precedence over any local management, is a terrifying security hole. [0] https://support.google.com/c…

>That this is the intended behavior, for any remote management to take precedence over any local management, is a terrifying security hole. You've actually got it backwards. In an enterprise domain like this, allowing local management to take precedence over remote management and policies is a massive security hole for the domain as a whole not to mention required by regulatory bodies dictating information security f…

The device belongs to the owner and the owner should be able to override anything.

If an organization wants to set policies that can’t be overridden, it should pay for the devices. (And even then, the user still has a right to privacy and a certain level of control).

If they set a MDM policy on a device I own, I’ll mail the organization the device and a bill for buying a new one that very same day.

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

#350
post #148

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…

Suing the CPS over this is simply taking money out of everyone else's pocket for your own enrichment.

Yeah, why anyone gotta make trouble for the guvnah
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