New Mexico AG Sues Google For Allegedly Collecting Location Data, Contact Lists From Students

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Google on Thursday was hit with a lawsuit by New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas, alleging the search giant is illegally collecting data on school children. The suit says Google is collecting the personal information through a program the company has with New Mexico's school districts, in which it provides Chromebooks and access to G Suite for Education apps for free. Those apps include Gmail, Calendar and Google Docs. The practice would run afoul of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, a federal law that regulates data collection from sites with users who are under 13 years old. The lawsuit accuses Google of collecting information on students' locations, their passwords, what websites they've visited, what they've searched for on Google and YouTube, their contact lists and voice recordings. Balderas also said in the lawsuit that Google "mined students' email accounts" and "extracted" information for advertising purposes until 2014. Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said in a statement: "These claims are factually wrong. G Suite for Education allows schools to control account access and requires that schools obtain parental consent when necessary. We do not use personal information from users in primary and secondary schools to target ads. School districts can decide how best to use Google for Education in their classrooms and we are committed to partnering with them."

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