Yesterday, the FTC kicked the carcass of Edmodo for allegedly violating COPPA. Edmodo was fined $6 million, but the fine is suspended because Edmodo shut down last year and can’t pay. It would have been nice if Edmodo had been fined back in 2017 when they had ad tracking on their site, but I digress.
The FTC statement should be read as a shot across the bow of other edtech companies. One excerpt from the FTC writeup really stands out:
“According to the FTC, Edmodo illegally passed the COPPA compliance buck to teachers and schools. For example, when teachers opened an account, if they clicked on the Terms of Service link, if they scrolled down, and if they happened to find a paragraph buried on the bottom of the second page – all big ifs – here’s what Edmodo said:
If you are a school, district, or teacher, you represent and warrant that you are solely responsible for complying with COPPA, meaning that you must obtain advance written consent from all parents or guardians whose children under 13 will be accessing the Services. . . . When obtaining consent, you must provide parents and guardians with our Privacy Policy; you can find a sample permission slip here [NOTE: According to the complaint, the company website didn’t include a link]. You must keep all consents on file and provide them to us if we request them. For more information on COPPA, please click here [NOTE: No link here either, despite the “click here” prompt]. If you are a teacher, you represent and warrant that you have permission and authorization from your school and/or district to use the Services as part of your curriculum, and for purposes of COPPA compliance, you represent and warrant that you are entering into these Terms on behalf of your school and/or district.
The FTC alleges the company unfairly used that hard-to-find and hard-to-understand legalese to shift COPPA compliance responsibilities to teachers and schools. Oh no, you don’t, Edmodo.”
In other words, edtech companies can’t force districts, schools, or teachers to do the heavy lift required by COPPA. That obligation falls firmly onto the companies themselves.
I’ve been reading privacy policies for years (and yeah – don’t ask. I used to be fun. Now I read privacy policies). Edmodo’s practice of pushing their obligations onto schools and teachers who had no idea what they were committing to felt equal parts not okay and like yesterday’s news. I had seen similar language more times than I can count.
Filled with a morbid curiosity, I went to everybody’s favorite source of algorithmically rigged data: google.com. Once there, I used key terms from the language cited by the FTC:
“you are a school, district, or teacher” AND “responsible for complying with COPPA”
The results flowed like water. I’m including a subset of the results below. As of this writing (May 23, 2023), the urls listed below contained language identical to or highly similar to the language flagged by the FTC as problematic. To be clear, I am not saying that the orgs listed below is violating COPPA. What I am saying is that a search flagging specific phrases identified as problematic by the FTC are present in the terms of service for multiple companies, including well known EdTech providers like Remind, HaikuDeck, ScootPad, and Achieve3000 from McGraw-Hill.
- https://agentsheets.com/COPPA.pdf
- https://www.sutori.com/en/terms-of-use
- https://letters2president.org/guidelines-under13
- https://www.magmamath.com/agreement
- https://www.exploros.com/terms-of-service/
- https://www.haikudeck.com/terms
- https://www.codingforkid.com/terms.html
- https://subject.com/terms-of-service
- https://codehs.com/privacy
- https://classifylearning.com/privacy-policy/
- https://inspace.chat/terms-of-service/
- https://www.getalma.com/terms
- https://policies.classting.com/en/privacy
- https://www.anomalystudios.com/terms-of-use-and-conditions
- https://www.scootpad.com/about/terms
- https://www.knowledgehook.com/terms
- https://www.create-learn.us/terms
- https://njctl.org/accounts/terms/
- https://www.enlearn.org/terms-of-use/
- https://www.enoved.com/terms-of-service
- https://collegespring.org/services-terms-of-use/
- https://www.remind.com/terms-of-service
- https://learn.playposit.com/terms/
- https://library.smileandlearn.net/privacyterms/en
- https://brainika.co/tnc-pp
- https://www.achieve3000.com/who-we-are/about-us/privacy-policy/ (from McGraw Hill)
- https://www.paletteedu.org/terms-of-service
In the FTC’s joint motion order against Edmodo, the FTC re-states that COPPA notifications must be “Clear and Conspicuous.” Specifically, the FTC states, when a company uses a visual disclosure, that the “visual disclosure, by its size, contrast, location, the length of time it appears, and other characteristics, must stand out from any accompanying text or other visual elements so that it is easily noticed, read, and understood.”
This description brings us to another interesting adventure in “let’s do as little as possible” in COPPA-land, courtesy of Edulastic.
Below, see the sign up page for teachers joining Edulastic. Can you spot where teachers get put on the hook?
How about now?
Now? That’s pretty “Clear and Conspicuous”, right?
I’d love to see the FTC start cleaning house. EdTech is rampant with lazy, sloppy practice, and kids deserve better. COPPA compliance is an incredibly low bar, and it’s 2023.