GoGuardian: The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth

A Major Threat to Privacy

In the mid 2010's, a new privacy threat was growing, an educational software designed to monitor students online. It was called GoGuardian. This threat is still around today, and it is becoming more widespread. So what exactly can it do, and how can it be stopped?

What is GoGuardian?

GoGuardian is a Chrome extension used by schools to monitor students, block content, and supposedly prevent suicide. It consists of a fleet of services with various combinations of normal and nefarious functions. These services block websites, monitor for suicide, and facilitate classroom activities.

However, this educational software has a dark side. To perform its function, the extension collects every last possible bit of data it can get about you. If you look up the permissions that the extension requires, you will find things like GPS location, the ability to see your browsing history (and even what you are typing into a site), and the ability to block websites. GoGuardian has some other concerning abilities as well. It allows your teacher to see your screen (and likely saves the images in an archive somewhere), and lets your teacher open or close browser tabs on your computer.

If you would rather not let your teacher(s) spy on you and remotely operate your computer, the extension does not give you that option. It cannot be removed and blocks bypass methods like VPNs and privacy blockers. There are also many problems with the extension blocking sites that are needed to do homework. All this just to stop students from playing games in class.

Is GoGuardian Legal?

Short answer: no. Long answer: it's complicated. GoGuardian, especially when used by public schools (which are part of the US government), violates the 4th and 5th amendments of the US Constitution, which ban unlawful search and seizure and give people the right to not self-incriminate. Since they have no search warrant and consent has not been given, searching a student's computer (like GoGuardian does) is illegal. While GoGuardian claims to be "committed to privacy", and backs this up with Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and Student Privacy Pledge (SPP) compliance, both regulations have loopholes. SPP isn't even a law. It's a commitment written by software companies, who deliberately put loopholes in it to continue tracking students, effectively making the contract useless. FERPA, like the SPP, has many loopholes that allow software like GoGuardian to collect student data without consent. This means that GoGuardian's "commitment to privacy" is a complete lie. It is unclear if GoGuardian violates other laws, such as the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), but it is very likely that it violates at least some international privacy laws.

GoGuardian and Human Rights

Perhaps the most concerning thing about GoGuardian is its ability to facilitate human rights abuses. In addition to the obvious violation of students' right to privacy, the software also has implications for LGBTQ rights. Many states have anti-LGBTQ laws, and schools could use GoGuardian to enforce them, penalizing students for viewing LGBTQ-related content. Another problem is that filters like GoGuardian often flag LGBTQ content as "sexually explicit material", even when it is not. This violates the right to free speech, as well as the rights of LGBTQ students.

How To Fight It

For a Chrome OS device or within the Chrome browser itself, it is very hard to remove GoGuardian. There are tutorials on the internet, mostly involving a recovery mode reboot, but many of these work-arounds don't actually work. If you are not on a Chromebook, you can remove GoGuardian by simply deleting the Chrome browser from your computer. The way that GoGuardian targets students relies on Google Admin, which doesn't work on browsers without Google sign-in at the browser level (anything other than Chrome). For instructions on how to remove Chrome from your device, see my article, "In Case You Needed Another Reason to Delete Chrome". Just make sure to avoid importing extensions when you import your bookmarks.

Additional Links:

Permissions required for the GoGuardian extension to work, as stated by GoGuardian's own website.

Student spyware and human rights: EFF

Google Sites

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