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Editor's Note: Leah A. Plunkett is the author of "SHARENTHOOD: Why We Must Think Before Talking About Our Children Online." She is associate dean and professor at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law and associate professor at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. The opinions in this comment are specific to the author. See more opinion at CNNe.com/opinion
(CNN) - The terms and conditions of our lives have changed beyond recognition in recent weeks. It's time for the terms and conditions provided by digital technology companies to be rewritten to match.
Consider the agreement we have made with most technology companies: We transfer our private information and provide us with free or low-cost digital services in exchange for using this data however they want.
On any given day, this deal is dishonorable. During the covid-19 pandemic, when children and their parents trust the Internet more than ever, it is immoral. The data that is collected from and about our children, used by technology companies and shared with third parties, can have a serious impact on their future. Technology companies must safeguard the privacy of our children by stopping these invasive practices.
From school to sports to social activities and much more, we are fighting to get our children online to adapt to our new reality. We are logging into countless platforms to bring the world into our homes. In doing so, we are also giving personal information about our children at an ever-increasing rate.
In disaster mode, we are giving devices to our children, we ask them to speak with intelligent assistants and to do much more without having the ability to read, much less understand, what we are agreeing to. And as we are confined at home, we share private information about our children online, as well as setting them up to share their own information from social media to smart devices and more.
The risks are high when it is not clear who is obtaining that information or what they are going to do with it; Marketing companies can use our children's data to create targeted ads, while data brokers have collected information on children up to 2 years of age.
Of course, there are people and institutions that we want to allow digital access to our children's information. Take remote learning, for example: We want our children's teachers and schools to see when they are logged in, what progress they have made, and where they might be struggling. This allows teachers to stay involved with their students and address any potential issues, be it in real-time classrooms or recorded modules, discussion posts, or online assignments. Without the exchange of information, remote learning fails.
But there are key risks with remote learning: We don't want trolls or hackers to have access to our children's private information, which can happen when unauthorized third parties harass virtual classrooms in real time (a recent “Zoombombing” outbreak has prompted the New York Attorney General's office to open an investigation into the company's privacy practices, and ask the organization to update its privacy policy and issue a statement that they were implementing safeguards) or enter data warehouses educational (as was the case with educational software maker Pearson in the fall of 2018. The company claims they found and fixed the vulnerabilities once they were discovered).
We also do not want our children's personal information to be collected, used or shared by educational technology providers or affiliated external providers, beyond what is necessary for remote learning. Schools can use this private information to digitally monitor students for possible security risks and share this information with law enforcement, according to a report published in "Education Week." Data brokers can obtain this information and use it to create student profiles based on ethnicity, wealth, and lifestyle for marketing purposes, according to a study by the Center for Information Law and Policy at the Faculty of Fordham University Law.
Your information may also be aggregated, analyzed, and shared by data brokers with future gatekeepers such as universities, insurance companies, or employers. The exchange of information, which occurs in all types of digital technology, not only in education technology, can have serious effects on the opportunities of our children, since the data is collected and used to shape their destinations.
Under federal student privacy law, schools that use digital technology to handle children's “personally identifiable information” (PII) without obtaining parental consent in advance must have established contractual protections, so the provider of Digital technology is required not to re-share PII or use it for purposes other than facilitating remote learning. However, even under normal circumstances, it may be difficult or impossible for schools and school districts to negotiate these complex student arrangements; It is understandable that they do what we do in our homes: click or swipe to accept the standard terms and conditions that normally do not apply. Offer meaningful privacy protection.
Given the pressure that the pandemic has put on our educational institutions, they are even less equipped to focus on best practices for privacy protection or even privacy law enforcement.
As parents, we are even worse off than schools, even if we read all the fine print, we don't have the ability to negotiate for more privacy protection. We can take or leave digital technology, and right now, the vast majority of us cannot leave it.
In the past, parents have had to rely on the government to enforce privacy laws. Last fall, the Federal Trade Commission and the New York Attorney General struck a record deal with Google and YouTube, a subsidiary, for alleged violations of companies' digital privacy laws for children. At the time, Google said in a statement: "We know how important it is to provide children, families and family creators with the best possible YouTube experience and we are committed to doing it well," stating that they "would limit data collection and use in videos made for children only for what is needed to support the operation of the service. "
We still need federal and state agencies to serve as watchdogs, but resources are understandably scattered right now. That leaves parents as the first and last line of defense for children's privacy. Because parents have little bargaining power, what happens to children's digital privacy now is largely in the hands of tech companies.
Technology companies must change their default settings so that they do not collect or share any information beyond the advertised service or product. If we use a physical activity tracker for our children to exercise, for example, the data on our children's health must remain between the user, the device provider and any third parties necessary to obtain the data we need.
Tech companies should also be more transparent about their privacy policies and take a more proactive stance in protecting our children. When we blindly click “accept,” we must accept the terms and conditions that guarantee that our children's data will not be used for marketing, advertising, product development and profiling, nor will it be sold to data brokers or similar entities.
If technology companies wish to continue participating in these activities, they must clearly detail each specific activity and its purpose, including what data will be collected and what third parties are involved before requesting our explicit consent.
Many of us are currently trapped at home, relying on different technology platforms to maintain an appearance in our lives; Technology companies must protect our children's privacy and their ability to explore, prosper and grow right now.
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