Kids should reclaim the ownership of their digital lives.

Another school year has started. Many kids are connecting with new friends and develop themselves intellectually. This school year also means a new cycle of data collection. At many schools students are using school-provided tablets or laptops and this seems to show great educational benefits for students but also raises some serious questions about privacy and long-term security of this generation.
Schools have insights in everything what kids do on their school devices. They can see all files ever downloaded and see their web-browsing activity. This kind of data can give schools a good picture of students their behavioural patterns, intellectual interest and learning disabilities. We all know that schools have the best interest with protecting their students. However, when schools and districts are not run or advised by information security experts it gives unknown third parties access to kids digital lives. Because schools don’t have the right resources, the monitoring functions are mostly outsourced to third parties with vague content. The consequence of this phenomenon is that third parties whose data protection policies are often unknown to the parents may have access to similar information and data as the school administration does.
Neither kids or parents know where the collected user data is stored, who has access to it and how it is secured. Kids now a days don’t read long privacy policies and terms of written when downloading of singing up for the newest applications.
Because this lack of security, schools, parents and tech companies need to consider what kind of student data should be collected, who owns it and how it is secured. Resulting from this security problem, data from this generation can easily be exploited and exposed. Besides kids being easy targets for identity theft they also can be in contact with cyber risks that’s everyone facing today.
In my opinion the first step is that the parents should begin to ask questions and call for transparency about the school and corporate access to their kids data and how it is secured.