Dive Brief:
- The number of companies agreeing to the Future of Privacy Forum and The Software & Information Industry Association's Student Privacy Pledge has grown to 109.
- By signing the pledge, which launched in October with 14 signatures, ed tech companies promise to adhere to a list of 12 commitments aimed at ensuring data security.
- eSchool News attributes the spike in signatories to President Barack Obama's January endorsement of the pledge.
Dive Insight:
The New York Times points out that the pledge doesn't mandate certain security steps, such as the encryption of logins on sites that collect personal data on students. It also doesn't mandate that companies protect teacher or parent data.
The issue of unencrypted logins is one the paper dealt with recently in an article about Tony Porterfield, a Cisco engineer and father of two who is using his computer skills to uncover privacy flaws in digital education products. Porterfield went to The New York Times after discovering that the online reading assessment product his son was supposed to use was not only unencrypted, but stored passwords in plain text — two security weaknesses that could allow unauthorized users to access private information.
