Saturn app raises privacy issues

Students use the social calendar app Saturn to track their school lives, many of them unaware of how their personal data is distributed.

Saturn is a schedule management app that provides timed notifications that follow students’ schedules. Students also use Saturn to view other students’ profiles and schedules. 

Saturn is owned by the parent company behind the popular social media platform, Snapchat. Snapchat is notorious for being a hub of predatory and illegal operations. Snaps and messages within the app disappear after being viewed. After the introduction of SnapMap in 2017, there have been multiple incidents of assaults and attempted kidnappings using SnapMap. Many Snapchat users share their locations with strangers. In 2023, Evan William Blankenship attempted a kidnapping of a woman at gunpoint. The victim stated to ABC News that she only knew the attacker through Snapchat, and that he had used the location sharing feature to find her.

Personal online safety outside of school is still a major concern. IT Specialist Samuel Francois advises students to be cautious with sharing information online. 

“The TV you watch, the phone, it listens to you,” said Francois. “Your phone can hear everything you do.”

With a widely used and poorly regulated app like Saturn that requires individual inputting of data from students, student safety becomes an issue that is out of the school’s hands.

An investigation by the Office of the Attorney General found that in 2021-2023, the Saturn company made user verification optional. User verification requires  users to provide their student email address. Not having requirements for proof of age or school membership has allowed for unverified individuals to enter school communities. Unverified users have access to student profiles, their schedules and the school they attend. The app also made copies of users’ contact books, keeping them even if the user removed access in their settings. Saturn was forced to pay $650,000 in penalties. The company needed to restrict visibility of non users’ information, delete unauthorized copies of users’ contact books, allow for teachers to remove their names from class schedules, and ensure that all users under 18 review their privacy settings every six months. 

In February, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Snapchat for its unethical and addictive model that exposes underage users to inappropriate material. 

“I will not allow Snapchat to harm our kids by running a business designed to get Texas children addicted to a platform filled with obscene and destructive content,” Paxton stated. “Parents have a fundamental right to know the dangers of the apps their kids are using and not be lied to by Big Tech.”

5Star on the other hand, is an app paid for and regulated by the school. A large school like David Douglas pays $2,650 for yearly renewals. With 5Star, students can sign up for events and clubs, purchase tickets, check into events, redeem points and buy from the Scot’s shop, complete surveys and request hall passes. The 5Star app states on their website that geo-coordinates are not stored and locations are not logged. Only the school has access to student profiles, and these safeguards prevent unauthorized access. Students have access to their own profile but can not change their data, nor can they access other student profiles. 5Star claims to not engage in targeted activity or selling information to third party companies.

Activities director Kelsey Stiff said that 5Star went through a year and a half of vetting before it was used at school. According to Stiff, the school district worked with the 5Star company to ensure high standards of student safety were going to be met. 

“There was a lot of pushback with the district and the 5Star company,” said Stiff. “They were serious about student safety.”

What 5Star and Saturn have in common, despite their differences, is that they are presented as tools to help the student body. 

Students have mixed opinions about how convenient these services really are. 

 Junior Brayden Nghiem is a user of Snapchat and an occasional user of Saturn. Nghiem was shocked to learn about the connection between the two platforms.

 “When I use Saturn it’s spiritually like Snapchat,” Nghiem said.

“I feel like it’s kind of dumb,” junior Maya Espinoza said. “If you already have your classes memorized, there’s not really a point for having it.”

“It’s all on you,” Francois said, “to know how your information gets around.”