Monday, 4 April 2022

New best story on Hacker News: Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it

Tell HN: My kid's school installed spyware and I can't remove it
534 by ccleve | 272 comments on Hacker News.
My middle schooler goes to Chicago Public Schools. They use Google Classroom for assignments and other communications. I bought him a Chromebook for schoolwork, but also for other private things. When we logged in, the system installed GoGuardian monitoring software on the Chromebook without notice or permission. And now I can't remove it. I wrote to GoGuardian support, and they replied that I had to contact the school or remove my son as a user. The instructions for removing him as a user do not work; on the contrary, I see the message "cps.edu manages this user and may remotely manage settings and monitor user activity" and he can't be removed. I did a full factory reset, signed in to his account again, and now the system is once again locked down. So now I'm in the position where I have to ask permission from a local government entity to please let me install stuff and don't monitor the computer I bought and paid for. Does anyone know how to refer these people to law enforcement for prosecution?