GoGuardian on my sons school laptop | Hacker News Reader

GoGuardian on my sons school laptop

4 pointsnomionly2 comments

Does anyone know about something called GoGuardian? My child was given a laptop from the school district. The one page instruction sheet mentioned it as being on it. However there is evidently the ability for the administrator t not only keep track of computer usage, but also keep track of who uses it through visual and sound monitoring. Now I'm not aware of the legality of this. Nor of just how far that goes. But why is my childs educational tool allowed to also watch our lives? If someone can give me some insight into this, I would appreciate it. Just because theyve restricted our lives doesnt mean they should get to also be in them at will. More seriously, since these laptops were provided to those families of lesser means, this would also seem to be a targeted monitoring.

It will be easier to treat the machine as hostile (like any piece of untrusted Internet infrastructure) and not give it access to any sensitive data, so put it on a separate network (or be mindful of the risk and only use encrypted protocols on your LAN) and only have your kid use it for school resources and no personal stuff at all than to try and fight the school to uninstall it - don't log into any personal accounts, etc. The camera can be taken care of with a piece of electrical tape. For the microphone you can find the mic hole and destroy it with something sharp like a needle. If your son needs to use the mic you can give him a wired one (I recommend USB ones) or a Bluetooth one (AirPods are great in this case).

It should be possible at first to deactivate the microphone and camera completely. Thr camera can be obscured with tape. This sounds scary and I cannot help you with the legal advise here, but filing a complaint (even though you might feel strange after receiving a "free" laptop) might be an idea if thats applicable in your country. In order to find out more about possibilities, can you describe the laptop? What model, company, does it run windows, are there things on the computer disabled, that would be accessible on your personal computer like system settings?

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