Give us your phone number, because that's what everyone does

How bad is that? says Dig as he reads aloud the School Online E-safety Policy.

The form, Tiger dutifully filled in. It's her application form for a set of conventional A-Levels. She has a minor malfunction at 'Date of Birth' when the form uses an American date format, so month and day are all arse-about-face.

Why the school's application form uses the American system - when we're located closer to Newport Pagnell than New York - I have no idea.

Tiger sends out another error message when she's instructed to enter all her contact details, including her phone number. So Dig goes to find the School Online E-safety Policy which reads,

'Tell children not to give out their personal details. If they want to subscribe to any services online, make up a family email address to receive the mail.'

Well, that is what we do with the email address. But we leave out the mobile phone number. When the form won't accept a blank space, we add 0!7928726252. We apologise if that's yours.

But we have no idea where these records go. Do you? If the school promises to delete your data, do they trust that to a third party? Is my daughter's mobile phone number sucked up and spat out in the USA, outside European restrictions, and sold on, and on, by companies who have no accountability to me, to you, and to any child?

But hey, maybe in 20 years time, a child's life will be run with a phone number. Then we parents will buy that teaching app, so conventional school won't even be necessary. Every child will be tracked, monitored, sold testing packages and accredited via their iphone.

But I was ever the pessimist.


Google Under Fire for Data-Mining Student Email Messages
As part of a potentially explosive lawsuit making its way through federal court, the giant online-services provider Google has acknowledged scanning the contents of millions of email messages sent and received by student users of the company’s Apps for Education tool suite for schools.