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GoGuardian

2025-02-28T14:55:04Z

HaterOfBadThings:

{{InfoboxCompany
| Name = GoGuardian
| Type = Private
| Founded = 2015
| Industry = Education
| Official Website = https://www.goguardian.com/
| Logo = GoGuardian.png
}}

[[Wikipedia:GoGuardian|GoGuardian Inc.]] is a software company that focuses on education. They offer a few browser extensions for Google Chrome called "GoGuardian" that has been known to spy on people, give teachers/admins full control to your computer, and block websites. Another one is called "GoGuardian Beacon" which does the things previously mentioned as well as prevent suicide.{{CitationNeeded}} GoGuardian has caused a lot of controversy, as it accesses sensitive information.

==Controversies==
===Student data collection concerns===
According to a study in 2023, school administrators using the GoGuardian admin tool have access to student "browsing histories, documents, videos, app and extension data, and content filtering and alerts."<ref name="EFF">https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/how-goguardian-invades-student-privacy?language=en</ref> GoGuardian claims "they de-identify data before sharing it with third parties or other entities", though it is reported the data can be deanominized.<ref name="EFF" /> This is an issue as students in American school districts are under the age of 18, which if advertised to with targeted ads based on their GoGuardian data is a direct violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Also, students who utilize this software as a service (SAAS) are forced into using school devices with the monitoring software preinstalled, such as Chromebooks.

===Workarounds===
There are a few workarounds, like going to task manager (Shift+Esc) and ending the GoGuardian process. Some schools have disabled ending processes as a result. Another workaround is using your own laptop with a browser other than Google Chrome.

==References==
<references />

GoGuardian

2025-02-27T15:11:37Z

HaterOfBadThings: Created page

GoGuardian Inc. is a software company that focuses on education. They offer a browser extension for Google Chrome that has been known to spy on people, give teachers/admins full control to your computer, and prevent suicide. (GoGuardian Beacon). GoGuardian has caused a lot of controversy, since it blocks websites.

==Controversies==
GoGuardian, when the extension is only running on Google Chrome without a teacher monitoring, blocks a lot of websites, including privacy-focused search engines like DuckDuckGo and Brave Search.

Due to the fact almost everyone born after the early 2000s has dealt with this software, (including me) it is considered forced spyware with little to no workarounds, especially if the school requires students to use school-issued chromebooks.

(personal experience) Teachers have been known to abuse this software, like one of mine from last year who was running it for me all day (when they are only supposed to run it only for the duration of the class, not for the whole day) and set a 3 tab limit, blocked YouTube, and did other bad things.

GoGuardian knows what they are doing because on their youtube channel, they disabled comments on their videos. On some videos, they disabled like and dislike count but on others, the dislike percent is very high, usually 90-95%. (Data obtained from Return Youtube Dislike Extension)

==Workarounds==
There are a few workarounds, like going to task manager (Shift+Esc) and ending the GoGuardian process. Some schools have disabled ending processes as a result.

Another workaround is using your own laptop with a browser other than Google Chrome.

==Sources==
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/how-goguardian-invades-student-privacy?language=en

https://www.goguardian.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoGuardian

https://www.youtube.com/@GoGuardian