--- TIC-TECH message:
More on the use of the schools and our students by unprofitable N2H2.
Sylvia Peterson <sylviap@cks.ssd.k12.wa.us>
The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition -- January 26, 2001
Web-Filter Data From Schools Is Put Up for Sale by Company
By JASON ANDERS, WSJ.COM
Few companies know more about what children do on the Internet at school
than N2H2 Inc. The company's Web-filtering software, called Bess, is
used by more than 12 million students in kindergarten through 12th grade,
and new federal rules are likely to push the number higher.
Because it typically is installed as a school's gatekeeper to the
Internet, Bess knows where the students go on the Web and how long they
spend there. It also knows when students try to access a site that's on
N2H2's blacklist for being too violent or containing pornography.
The question is whether marketers should get to know students' surfing
habits, too. Late last year, N2H2 began selling its data. The information,
called Class Clicks, is aggregated, meaning it can't be used to identify
surfing habits of specific students, or even specific schools. But privacy
advocates say the sale of children's usage data is troubling, and they
worry that marketers are encroaching on ground that once was sacred.
"Students just should not be contributing to marketing
tools and subjected to profiling based on how they are using
the educational tools of the Internet," says David Sobel,
general counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information
Center in Washington.
N2H2 spokesman Allen Goldblatt counters that schools and parents have no
reason to be concerned. "This is a real nonissue for us," he says. "This
information is so anonymous and vague."
Just under half of all schools and libraries use some sort of
filtering software, and N2H2 has about 20% of this market, according to
International Data Corp., a research firm. The new Children's Internet
Protection Act makes the use of such software a requirement for schools
and libraries that want to obtain money from the federal E-rate program,
which helps schools get on the Internet.
N2H2 says it began tracking students' Internet activities in late
1999. It figured the data would be useful to teachers and to operators of
educational Web sites. Then, in the summer of 2000, it began looking into
other uses of the data. It soon began talking with New York marketing
firm Roper Starch Worldwide about developing a marketing product the
two could sell.
As a result, for $15,000 a year, marketers and Web-site operators can
get monthly reports that detail where kids are going on the Internet,
along with Roper Starch's aggregate estimates of the kids' ages and
races. At its most specific, N2H2 says, the reports group students into
one of nine U.S. census districts. The company says there is no way for
buyers of the data to figure out who the students are.
"We would never do anything that compromises the trust of the students
or the schools. To date, we haven't had a single school district that
has asked us to remove it from the sample," says Cory Finnell, director
of analytics for N2H2, which is based in Seattle.
Still, it is unclear how many of N2H2's school clients realize that
their students' Web activities are part of a marketing product. N2H2
says schools were specifically told that the company was collecting the
data in a December 1999 report that was sent to all of the company's
educational clients. But the report was written months before N2H2 first
met with Roper Starch and it doesn't mention any plans to sell the school
traffic data.
Jeff Johnson, who oversees computer operations for the Greendale School
District, a former N2H2 client in Greendale, Wis., says he didn't know
information was being collected for a marketing program. "That's something
I would have a big problem with," he says. "It seems inappropriate." His
school stopped using N2H2's software last fall over an unrelated issue.
Kent Guske, technology director for Worth County Schools in Sylvester,
Ga., also says he didn't know that N2H2 was selling data. But he considers
the marketing effort benign: "I don't really see why it would be a
concern if it's just general usage data on where kids are going," he says.
Congress moved to protect children's online privacy with the Children's
Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, or Coppa, which took effect in
April 2000. The act was designed, in part, to protect young children from
marketing efforts. But privacy advocates argue that it doesn't go far
enough and note that it doesn't prohibit the kind of data collection
N2H2 is doing. The act, which applies to children younger than 13,
prohibits the collection of personal information that can be used to
identify someone.
For its part, SurfControl PLC, another maker of filtering software and
one of N2H2's competitors, says it doesn't collect data on any of its
users' surfing habits and believes it would be inappropriate to do so.
N2H2 acknowledges the company's software, which often is configured
to act as a "proxy server," collects a wide range of data, just as the
servers of any Internet service provider do. Proxy servers, which act
as gateways for Internet traffic, can log a user's Web activities --
including sites visited, pictures viewed and information submitted
in forms. N2H2 says it has built in safeguards to make sure that only
anonymous aggregate data become part of its marketing effort.
Deborah Pierce, an attorney who specializes in privacy matters for the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, says she is troubled by the amount of data
collected. "The bottom line is to get this data they're selling they're
actually collecting a lot more data on their server logs," she says.
Robert Belair, a privacy attorney with the Washington firm Mullenholz,
Brimsek & Belair, says N2H2's data collection complies with Coppa. "From
a legal standpoint, it sounds like they're fine. But I always tell my
clients that public relations is a different matter," he says.
So far, very few people have seen the data N2H2 is selling. Despite
discounting the product to $10,000, Roper Starch has sold the product
to only two clients: New York-based education portal BigChalk Inc. and
the Defense Department. (N2H2, which went public in July 1999, has yet
to report a profit.)
BigChalk purchased the data because it wanted a better idea of how it
was stacking up against competitors, says Nan Halperin, vice president
of sales and marketing. She says the company wasn't concerned about
the way the data were being collected. "I don't think the data [are]
being used inappropriately, nor do I think that's a threat," she says.
The Defense Department didn't return telephone calls seeking comment.
____________________________________________________________
"The citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute ...
It means that he
has not given up hope for his country, that he still has hope for it ... I
do not think it is
"selling America short" when we ask a great deal of her; on the contrary,
it is those who
ask nothing, those who see no fault, who are really selling America short."
Former U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * From the Listowner * * * * * * * * * * * *
. To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to:
majordomo@scn.org In the body of the message, type:
unsubscribe cccs-l
- End TIC-TECH message. To join, leave, or visit
the message archive, go to Tic-Tech on the Web:
http://fp.seattleschools.org/fpclass/tic-tech/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Feb 03 2001 - 20:38:35 PST