noyb has scored another win in its proceedings against Microsoft 365 Education: The Austrian data protection authority (DSB) has decided that the company illegally installed cookies on the devices of a pupil without consent. According to Microsoft’s own documentation, these cookies analyse user behaviour, collect browser data and are used for advertising. Microsoft now has four weeks to comply and cease the use of tracking cookies.
That’s cool! I wish Microsoft were fined though. Any money we can take off of them for not following the law, no matter how small it may be in the big picture, is a win in my eyes.
How about we simply use open source software in schools instead of supporting Microsoft in its virtual monopoly, spending unnecessary amounts of money on it and also exposing children to tracking?
It certainly wouldn’t hurt digital sovereignty in Europe and would at least show the next generation that there are alternatives. It has been known for years that Microsoft and Google want to get into schools to bind the next generation to their ecosystem.
(Of course this is still a „small“ win)
I believe right now there are discussions about it on Europe to adopt more FOSS projects. The biggest problems I see happening here is who effectively maintains this, as well who gives the money (and incentives) to keep the projects alive. As of now the German government does have a program for the incentives (do not recall if they do the people’s part). Hopefully it becomes more wide and clear how this will be going forward.
Also, I do not think it would be such a small win. If anything is very significant. If you can change at that stage the tools used, eventually propagates further into the working force at some point.
How much maintenance does a word processor need? The fact that its free IS the financial incentive. You could install mint and libre office on every computer in a school and it would basically be a seamless transition and most people would barely even notice.
Well when it’s a popular software package, swarms of “hackers” with increasingly better AI tools will be attacking it, foreign governments will be attacking it, especially if it’s used by governments. So security will be a serious, constant concern.
Open source will both help and hinder that.
Really a nonprofit consortium should be formed with paid engineers who focus on this 100%. But that nonprofit will be infiltrated and corrupted… and so on and so forth.
Humanity is a corrupting force.
Humanity is a corrupting force.
There is a reason we put locks on our doors and have insurance in case someone does break in. Sure this is an issue that needs to be addressed but it is one much smaller than getting the people in power to put things in motion. Once that happens (and we’re getting there) there will be funding and a public awareness campaign for sure, especially once the first politician gets hacked because they were using non-proprietary software because he wanted to kick Big Tech out…
Linux is already running the vast majority of internet accessible servers as it is, so this isn’t exactly a new issue that hasn’t been addressed.
You know that this will be used to enforce user authentication for EVERYONE, right? How else do you expect them to differentiate between children and adults, given that they will never stop tracking the adults!?
They don’t have to do that at all. These are “Work or School” accounts, and generally with Schools they are on a specific education products on top of that. All they have to do is make the company/school enter ages for all their accounts if they are using EDU products. Microsoft can reasonably trust that data.
Not necessarily, TikTok now delete accounts they believe to belong to children under 13. They could have chosen to do age authentication the British way but i suppose they had a big reason not to. Microsoft might understand they could lose business if they force users to prove they’re not children. It’s not like everybody would trust MS with such data.
Nice. Then fine the fuckers till the fuckers ain’t fine.
Why aren’t there harsher penalties for behavior like this? They’re given 4 weeks to comply, and then all is fine as long as they stop? Seems like the message they’re sending is “you can track our kids, just be more careful not to get caught next time… If you do, you can at least rest assured that there’s no real punishment”
Yet to read the article, but I hope it gets enforced. I grow tired of seeing laws and proper judicial decisions not being enforced or being done so at the convenience of those interested.
