Students and staff are steered away from using Google Search and towards DuckDuckGo
Google is no stranger to privacy concerns with the search giant undergoing regulatory scrutiny almost every other day. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR, has sought to limit Google’s power in the world of data by mandating specific requirements for the collection, use, and storage of user data. The Netherlands is now taking additional steps to safeguard students across the country by adding new restrictions on the usage of Chrome OS and the Chrome web browser in schools.
Initial reports indicated that the Dutch education ministry had banned the two Google products. However, a Google Netherlands spokesperson told BleepingComputer over the weekend that ChromeOS and the Chrome browser are not entirely banned and that schools can continue using the products as long as they take additional steps to protect the students’ data.
Schools will have to adopt these extra measures until at least August 2023, when Google is expected to release updated versions of the two services that are expected to be more compliant with the GDPR. Dutch schools that wish to continue using Google’s offerings may refer to the technical guide on Google Workspace for Education published through SURF (in Dutch).
The guide directs schools to turn off ad personalization and ensure that the Google Cloud data storage location is in Europe. Spell checks and automatic translations of websites should also be disabled. YouTube video embedding should only be used in privacy-enhanced mode. SURF also asks schools to forego the use of Google’s search engine — there are ways of using the service anonymously, but users are generally encouraged to look for an alternative such as DuckDuckGo. If those measures don’t go far enough for some Dutch educators, they may also draft new group policies to further safeguard the privacy of their students.
The Dutch Minister of Education, Culture, and Science, along with the Minister of Primary and Secondary Education wrote a joint letter addressing the country’s parliament last year voicing concerns about Google’s handling of metadata including search histories and the duration of user activity through Workspace for Education.
While this new development isn’t as major a setback as we initially thought, it’s clear that Google has to walk a tightrope with GDPR, particularly when it comes to a sector like education.
