[Infowarrior] - Google Stops Scanning Student Gmail Accounts for Ads

[Richard Forno]

Google Stops Scanning Student Gmail Accounts for Ads
By ALISTAIR BARR

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/04/30/google-stops-scanning-student-gmail-accounts-for-ads/

Google said Wednesday that it stopped scanning student Gmail accounts for advertising purposes after the practice was scrutinized during a recent court case.

Google Apps for Education, a free service used by more than 30 million students, teachers and administrators, offers Gmail email accounts, as well as calendars, cloud storage and document creation.

Google didn’t place ads inside the apps, which it offered to educational institutions since 2006. However, the company continued to scan the contents of students’ Gmail accounts., gathering information that could potentially have been used to target ads to those students elsewhere online.

Google’s move marked the second time in as many weeks that privacy concerns prompted changes at a maker of education software. InBloom, a nonprofit that managed and stored data about school students, said last week it was shutting down over concerns about the way it collected and shared data. InBloom was partly financed by MicrosoftMSFT -0.89% co-Founder Bill Gates’ charity the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Students and other Gmail users sued Google last year in California, claiming the email scanning violated wiretap laws.

During the litigation, Google said that it scanned emails sent and received by students who attend schools that use Apps for Education. Education Week magazine reported that such activity may violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a law that protects educational records.

Bram Bout, director of Google for Education, said the company will no longer scan Gmail in Apps for Education, and won’t collect or use student data from Apps for Education for advertising purposes.

Google is making similar changes to its Apps services for businesses and government users, Bout said.

Google competes against Microsoft and others in the $8 billion market for software for elementary and secondary schools, according to the Software & Information Industry Association.


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