14 DAY TRIAL // Students are often encouraged to use education-focused mobile applications to help with learning, classwork, and other day-to-day activities. Many of these applications gather data from children and share it with third-party partners.
The Me2B Alliance, a non-profit industry organization dedicated to respectful technology, released a research report today to raise awareness about the data sharing practices of education applications used by schools. According to the results of the study, 60% of school apps are sending student data to various third parties, including ad networks like Google and Facebook.
Me2B Alliance Product Testing analyzed 73 mobile apps employed by 38 schools across 14 states. The mobile platforms are used by at least half of million people (including students, educators, and parents). The data flow of all 73 apps was examined by analyzing the SDKs of each application.
The SDKs provide developers with pre-packaged functional modules of code and help build persistent data channels back to the SDK's third-party developer. The extent of third-party data sharing in educational apps, as demonstrated by the number of SDKs, was part of the study.
What happens to this information?
Me2B researchers discovered that 48% of apps sent student data to Google and 14% to Facebook. Furthermore, each app sent data to 11 different third-party sources.
Me2B reveals that a part of data which without consent includes Identifiers (IDFA, MAID), Calls, Calendar, Location, Contacts, Microphone, Photos/Media Files, Network Data (IP address), permissions related to Camera, and Device ID.
Lisa LeVasseur, executive director of Me2B Alliance, states that “The findings from our research show the pervasiveness of data sharing with high-risk entities and the amount of people whose data could be compromised due to schools’ lack of resources,”
Moreover, she says that the study's goal is to bring these issues to light so that the appropriate funding and safeguards can be put in place to protect our most vulnerable people - our children.