Google says no ads in education tools. Technically true — for some of them. But YouTube? Regular Google tracking. Google Search? Same. Students use both daily for school. Like a casino saying "no gambling in the lobby" while slot machines are in the next room with the door always open.
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Google signed a pledge not to collect student data beyond educational needs. Then left Chrome Sync on by default, uploading every website your kid visits. The opt-out was buried so deep the EFF and a state AG both called it deceptive. Your kid can't choose not to use the Chromebook.
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Google tells schools education is at the core. Internal slides say the quiet part out loud: get kids hooked in kindergarten and you have them for life. They called it a "pipeline of future users." They're not selling a learning tool. They're selling advertisers a 13-year onboarding program.
Lenovo says it only collects anonymous, non-personal data to improve its software. But in 2015, Lenovo was caught secretly installing software that spied on ALL your encrypted web browsing — including banking and medical websites — and sold that data to advertisers. They had to pay over $10 million in fines and settlements.
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Lenovo says you can choose what data to share. But they embedded code in the laptop's hardware (BIOS) that automatically reinstalled their tracking software every time the computer started — even if you completely wiped the hard drive and reinstalled Windows from scratch. There was no setting to turn this off because it ran before Windows even loaded.
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Lenovo Vantage is supposed to help manage your laptop — update drivers and run diagnostics. But the phone app demands access to your precise GPS location, camera, phone call status, and the ability to see every app installed on your phone and how you use them. None of this is needed to manage a laptop.