Google Justifies Collecting Student Data and Other News

We continue with our trend of mashing up the latest news articles into a daily tech news ‘headlines’ sumup. Enjoy this one!

Google Justifies Collecting Student Data

Almost 30 million teachers and students use Google Apps for Education (GAFE), a set of apps and tools to aid in meeting educational goals including Google Calendar, GMail, Google Drive, Groups, Word, Spreadsheets and Presentations. This makes it a serious issue if Google is using student data to help target relevant ads.

Senator Al Franken requested Google to disclose what they do with the data collected from GAFE tools, amongst other products and services that includes Chromebooks, YouTube, Blogger, and so on.

“Personal information collected in GAFE core services is used solely to provide those services. Schools are responsible for compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, including obtaining parental consent for collection of students' personal information in GAFE core services. School administrators choose which, if any, additional Google services outside of the GAFE core services to allow their students to access. Many of these non-­GAFE services, such as Search, Earth, Maps and YouTube, have functions which schools find educationally relevant and valuable,” replied Susan Molinari, VP of Public Policy and Government Relations.

Sen. Franken believes that although the information is very explanatory and thorough, it is still, however, incomplete.

"Google's response to my questioning was thorough, and I appreciate its engagement on this topic. But I'm still concerned about what exactly Google does with the information it collects and processes from students who are browsing outside websites, like YouTube, while logged in to Google's education services. I plan to continue working with Google to clarify some of its policies, because it's important for the privacy of our students," said Sen. Franken.

Google’s Think Tank is Now Jigsaw

Google’s think tank, Google Ideas, is being transformed in a way that most of us never expected. The search engine giant is renaming the division to ‘Jigsaw’ and is branding it as an incubator.

The mission? "To tackle the toughest geopolitical challenges, from countering violent extremism to thwarting online censorship to mitigating the threats associated with digital attacks."

Jared Cohen, former US State Deptt. Policy Planning Staff, will be heading the new incubator as President.

Instagram Adds Two-Factor Authentication

To thwart hackers and attackers on the popular image-sharing platform, Instagram has added two-factor authentication. After a user verifies his/her phone number, after logging-in successfully an SMS is sent to the phone number with the code to be used to log in to the site.

The move was long overdue to add to the platform, since many high-profile celebrities and companies use it for promotional and branding initiatives.