The State of Kids' Privacy: Evaluating the Safety and Security of Kids' Tech
July 31, 2019
When it comes to choosing the apps, devices, and services we use with kids, there's a lot to consider. Beyond age-appropriate content, parents and teachers need to know how safe a product is before bringing it into their home or classroom. The State of Privacy research series summarizes the most critical aspects of consumer privacy using the findings from hundreds of product evaluations conducted by expert reviewers at Common Sense. Each report documents Common Sense privacy evaluations of popular products and shows changes in practices over time based on publicly available privacy policies and data from past reports.
With these findings, we can begin to see how kids' privacy is protected—or left vulnerable—under the privacy policies of apps and other digital services used by millions of students, schools, and families today.
Note: We are currently focusing on edtech evaluations and will expand this series to include "smart tech" and "kids' tech" in the future.
July 31, 2019
2019 State of EdTech Privacy
The 2019 State of EdTech Privacy Report represents the culmination of our research over the past four years in evaluating hundreds of education technology-related applications and services. The report includes findings from evaluations of 150 privacy policies from the most popular edtech applications and services in 2019, as determined by interviews with teachers, schools, and districts as well as total App Store downloads during the past 12 months. The 2019 data is compared to our findings from 100 evaluations completed in 2018 using our comprehensive assessment framework. For the first time, we can study the changes in company policies—and our subsequent Common Sense privacy evaluations—over time to see how the technology industry is addressing critical aspects of privacy, safety, security, and compliance.
May 24, 2018
2018 State of EdTech Privacy
The 2018 State of EdTech Privacy Report examines the privacy policies and practices of hundreds of education technology-related applications and services. Our overall findings are illustrative of current trends in the edtech industry, including widespread lack of transparency and inconsistent privacy and security practices. The key findings illustrate the better, worse, and unclear privacy and security practices of 100 popular edtech applications and services that were evaluated in the following areas: encryption, effective policy dates, selling data, third-party marketing, traditional advertising, behavioral advertising, ad tracking, third-party tracking, profiling, and the onward transfer of data to third parties.