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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

#361

Post by IWillForgetThis »

mfreydavis wrote: post #86

I work for a school district (not CPS) with about 2000 deployed Chromebooks and you're likely running into one of two things. 1) You somehow 'enrolled' the device into the Chromebook management. This is hard to do by mistake but if you do, essentially puts the device under the control of the school district. It also uses up a license on their end. We only allow particular IT only accounts to enroll devices. 2) You're…

I experienced scenario #2 on my son's Chromebook during pandemic school closings. One day he logged in with his school account and about half the apps were disabled, including core stuff he needed to do school work. I got the "we can't control your computer, that's not how computers work" speech from the school. It was one of the most frustrating things I've ever experienced. The policies finally got fixed a few days later, but I'm pretty sure the people I talked to thought I was crazy.

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

#362

Post by senectus1 »

I've had no experience with chromebooks but this sounds VERY much like Autopilot on windows/intune or Knox MDM enrollment on samsung android devices.

Ring the school again and talk to their IT, prompt their memories with the words MDM enrollment.

I bet one of them will have "AHA!" moment.

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

#363

Post by duxup »

spacemanmatt wrote: post #352
duxup wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the range of protections a school is required to provide and that school IT is usually poorly staffed, paid, funded awkwardly… tons of different motivations for various policies. I wouldn’t expect these policies to change. Best bet is to not mix school administrated accounts with personal devices.

> Best bet is to not mix school administrated accounts with personal devices. I feel like this is the obvious solution which is not fair or practicable to everyone, and so this whole post is about solutions that don't involve ceding an entire device to spyware distributors.

> so this whole post is about solutions that don't involve ceding an entire device to spyware distributors

I wonder if the school already provided a device.

My son’s school does.

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

#364

Post by dTal »

ironchef wrote: post #209
Extropy_ wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree with you in every way except your last point. IIRC, the administrators of a Google Workspace domain have almost complete control of the accounts created under it. For example, they're able to make sure that each account comes with preset Chrome Web Store extensions or they can limit or completely disable your control over your account. So, unless the school board locked down the Chromebook itself, (whic…

If I recall, the language that's used in situations like these is something along the lines of "Personal electronic devices will be governed under this policy when such devices are attached to the CPS network." So .. it's a "as long as you're going to connect to the CPS controlled network / resources, you must have software protections / controls in place".

Except it sounds like the spyware is still installed even if they log in with their personal account? The isolation principle is violated. It's a huge security hole.

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

#366

Post by dTal »

cosine83 wrote: post #212
MereInterest wrote: post #174

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…

No, it's a terrifying security hole, full stop. If I leave my non-managed Chromebook unattended (logged out!) for 30 seconds, someone can sign into it with their managed account and install spyware without me knowing?

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

#367

Post by sillysaurusx »

carschno wrote: post #339
simonh wrote: 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.

I have a sort of extremist take on this: students are literally prisoners. The job of a high school is to keep students from harming each other, feed them, and occasionally teach them something.

It’s why one of the highest offenses is to leave school grounds during school. Ditto for prison.

In that light, of course students are suspects. They’re already guilty of not being adults. They’re not allowed to have jobs, or to decide what they want to learn, or any of the other things that make adults human.

I don’t know what to do about it, but recognizing it seems step one.

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

#369

Post by dTal »

duxup wrote: post #88
trasz wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“the system installed GoGuardian monitoring software on the Chromebook without notice or permission.”

When I logged in with my son’s school account on chrome OS it had some notifications about who owns the account and so on. I don’t think it is as much a mystery as implied. In the end there’s no getting around that mixing device uses like this doesn’t work. It works less and less as the history of computers goes on.

>In the end there’s no getting around that mixing device uses like this doesn’t work

Surely this is the entire value proposition of ChromeOS - you sign in to your account, and the laptop magically becomes yours? It seems like a serious hole if a single sign-in is able to compromise other accounts.

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

#370

Post by Aeolun »

carschno wrote: post #339
simonh wrote: 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.

> However, the logic of seeing students as suspects is.

Is it? I don’t think I know any high school student that hasn’t tried to muck with, or work around, the schools systems.

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