Google Mishandling School Children’s Data

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Beautiful, Secure, Privacy-Respecting Laptops, Tablets, PCs, and Phones

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Google’s $30M Settlement: A Familiar Pattern in Mishandling Children’s Data

When Google agreed to pay $30 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over its unauthorized collection of children’s data on YouTube, it wasn’t a revelation—it was a confirmation. A confirmation that Google’s public posture of compliance often masks a deeper, more calculated strategy: delayed monetization through long-tail data mining.

The lawsuit alleged that Google harvested data from children under 13 without parental consent, using it to serve targeted ads. This violates the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which mandates strict safeguards for data collected from minors. Google denied wrongdoing, but this isn’t its first infraction. In 2019, they paid $170 million for similar violations.

Public schools widely use a variety of educational platforms, including learning management systems (LMS) like Google Classroom, where parents have minimal control. The issue with this case isn’t the fines—it’s the timeline. These practices persisted for years, even after regulatory penalties. That’s not oversight. That’s part and parcel of their business model. Google has consistently agreed to various protections, only to have them revisited at a later date.  Similar to the problem that Purism’s PQC Encryptor solves today: encrypting all data now so that it cannot be harvested at a future date and time.

Google Classroom: Compliance Theater

Google Classroom is widely adopted in K–12 education, pitched as a secure, ad-free platform. And yes, while students are under 18 and using school-managed Workspace accounts, Google claims it doesn’t use their data for advertising. But here’s the catch:

• Student data is still collected—names, emails, behavioral patterns, even metadata from documents and interactions.  These should be deleted at the point when the student graduates or reaches 18.
• The data is retained—not deleted, not anonymized, just held in stasis.
• Upon graduation, students are prompted to migrate to personal Gmail accounts. At that moment, the protections vanish, and the data pipeline activates.

This is where Google’s compliance narrative breaks down. They act as if they’re respecting privacy, but in reality, they’re delaying monetization until the user crosses an arbitrary age threshold (adulthood in most jurisdictions). The data collected during childhood becomes actionable the moment the student enters adulthood—without clear consent, without transparency, and without control.

The Illusion of Compliance

Google’s privacy posture often hinges on technicalities and time delays. They say:

• “We don’t serve ads to minors.”
• “We comply with COPPA.”
• “We don’t use student data for commercial purposes.”

But what they don’t say is:

• “We retain all that data.”
• “We activate it later.”
• “We design transitions that favor our ecosystem over time, over user autonomy.”

This is compliance theater—a performance of privacy that satisfies regulators on paper while preserving the long-term commercial value of user data even to minors.

When students turn 18 years of age, the only way to migrate their own schoolwork and data is via Gmail and its associated, complicated End User Agreement (EULA).  In short, one is forced to accept the onerous terms and conditions of the EULA, and by doing so, you open the back door to Google accessing the previously protected information.

The cynical and hypocritical nature of this whole behavior is loathsome and borders on the unethical and illegal.

The Pattern: Consent Deferred, Control Denied

Whether it’s YouTube, Classroom, or Chrome, Google’s approach to PII follows a consistent arc:

This isn’t just a privacy issue—it’s a trust issue. And it’s why organizations like Purism, privacy-first educators, and well-meaning citizens advocate for transparent, user-controlled data ecosystems.

What Needs to Change

• Mandatory opt-in for data migration of students when they are 18.  Clear disclosures to parents and students of what is collected before and after they reach 18, and how the data will be utilized, and to whom it will be disclosed.
• Independent audits of educational platforms
• Stronger enforcement of COPPA and state-level privacy laws
• Time-bound data deletion policies for minors

Google’s $30 million settlement is a drop in the bucket compared to the value extracted from children’s data. But it’s also a wake-up call. We must stop treating these infractions as isolated incidents and start recognizing them as systemic design choices.

We need to build platforms that respect users from day one, especially those that impact our children—and don’t wait until they turn 18 to flip the monetization switch.