published yesterday on The Washington Post shines a light on the fact that most teenagers who use Instagram and other social media websites, are not aware of the Terms of Service (TOS) and have no idea to the extent they are relinquishing their privacy, or their own content. , a privacy lawyer and partner at Schillings law firm in London says, “The situation is serious…Young people are unwittingly giving away personal information, with no real understanding of who is holding that information, where they are holding it and what they are going to do with it.� When Afia’s task force ran through a readability study, they found that it registered at a postgraduate reading level.
Afia was then tasked with rewriting Instagram’s TOS in plain
English. She summed it all up into a single sentence:
“Don’t use anybody else’s account without their permission or try to find out their login details.�
The task force said the same message could be applied to
most social media sites, but it focused on Instagram for its ubiquity and
popularity among teenagers.
The article focuses on teenagers as a demographic, but I
would venture to guess most people of all ages who use not only social media
sites, but also apps and other services to which they must click to agree to a
TOS, have no idea what they just agreed. To many, the “clickwrap� agreements
are just an annoying barrier to getting to the goods. A single click, and
you’re in!
For the average user, it’s not such a big deal I suppose.
After all, if you don’t care about your own content, why should I? Unless of
course, we are friends on Facebook and you start using an app that pulls in my
information. (Check your and be sure you pay special attention
to “Apps Others Use� and uncheck all of the items.)
On the other hand, if you are a teacher and you are agreeing
to some TOS on behalf of your students, then this becomes much more serious.
Especially in US public schools, your students (and their parents), trust you
to comply with at all times. So, when you open a class Twitter or
Instagram account for example, and post student photos (i.e., student records),
you are potentially making some decisions, and taking some risks, that go far
beyond that which you do for basic educational purposes in your classroom.
Kudos to
for adding hip language to its TOS to make it more readable.
How awesome would it be to have one resource that aggregates
all the most popular web services and rewrites the TOS in plain English? If
only… Oh wait, there’s ()!
Pretty handy, indeed. In addition, rock star educator, blogger, and friend, ,
keeps a publicly available .
What to do?
1. Read all TOS when signing up for a new service and check
back often, because almost all of them have a provision that says they can
change their TOS at any time, and they don’t have to tell you.
2. If you are planning to post student records (photos, work
samples, etc.), obtain explicit parental consent. This means those generic
directory permission forms, typically found embedded in school registration
forms, may not be enough. From FERPA website:
If student records are to be released…, the school or school system must obtain prior consent of the parent. Signed and dated written consent must: Specify the records that will be released; State the reason for releasing the records; and Identify the groups or individuals who will receive the records.
3. Check your school or district policies on releasing
student records, and if you’re lucky enough to have a , read it carefully.
4. Understand that just because a service is free, doesn’t
mean it’s OK to use. No matter how tempting, avoid uploading student names,
IDs, and other personally identifying information until you’ve reviewed the
service’s TOS and your district or school’s policies.
No comments: