There are many great ways to be transparent about your student privacy practices.
Post FAQs
While some technical questions from districts, educators, or parents may require you to dig out answers, there are some questions that will frequently be asked that you can post on your website. Some common questions include:
- What data does your product collect?
- Is any of that data Personally Identifiable Information (PII) (or information that could become identifiable if it were combined)?
- Who do you share PII with?
- How does your business make money? Do you sell student data?
- Does your service create a profile of students for purposes other than an educational purpose?
- Does your service have advertising? Ads are allowed, but many states ban ads targeted based on data about students or behavioral ads that are based on tracking a student across the web.
- When users (whether a student, educator, school, or district) request deletion of data, will you delete it?
- Do you allow parents to directly access data about their child held by your service, or do they need to go through their local school or district to access the data?
- Do you have appropriate security for the data you collect?
- Will you give your users notice and the ability to consent before major changes to your privacy policy?
- Have you signed on to the Student Privacy Pledge, gotten an iKeepSafe seal, signed the Massachusetts or California Student Privacy Alliance contracts, or been reviewed for privacy by Common Sense Media? Have you had an independent privacy audit done, or shown in some other impartial way that you are committed to protecting privacy?
Check out this FAQ from SchoolMessenger or this FAQ from G Suite for Education.
Make Your Privacy Policy Easy-To-Read
Your privacy policy shouldn’t be a complex document with lots of legalese; aim to make it easy for a parent to scan through in 10 minutes, with links to more information for district technical staff or others who need more information. For a great example, check out Quizlet’s Privacy Policy.
Do you have other transparency solutions for companies or resources we should share? Email us at info@studentprivacycompass.org.
