Teachers and parents of students enrolled in the state education network of São Paulo have reported that the “Minha Escola SP” application, used to optimize the relationship between school and students, was installed without authorization from the owners of cell phones. The practice would be in disagreement with the LGPD (General Data Protection Law), in force in the country since 2020.
The automatic download of the application would have happened between Tuesday (8) and Wednesday (9). The application would have even been downloaded on devices that do not have chips distributed by the Department of Education.
“Minha Escola SP” is aimed at students from state schools and those responsible for them. The objective would be to increase students’ engagement with the school and family participation in students’ school life, according to developer information available in app stores.
The software, last updated on July 18 of last year, offers data about the school, consultation of school report cards, simplified visualization of grades, a digital version of the student’s card and evaluation of school meals.
Among the permissions that users agree to when they spontaneously download the app are location, based on the device’s GPS; authorization to read, change, or delete USB storage content, take pictures and videos, and prevent device sleep mode and grant full network access.
According to Apeoesp (Union of Teachers of Official Teaching of the State of São Paulo), the entity was contacted by a large number of teachers reporting the appearance on their cell phones of the application “Minha Escola SP”, without having been authorized, as required by law. General Data Protection Regulation (LGPD).
“Immediately, the union contacted Seduc, which informed that the contracted company improperly installed the application through the corporate chip sent by the Government to the servers. The folder instructs the servers to uninstall the application”, he says in a note sent to CNN Brasil.
The Secretary of Education of São Paulo reported that an internal procedure was opened to investigate the case and said that the download would have happened during a test.
“The Department of Education has initiated an administrative process to investigate all the circumstances relating to the involuntary installation of the Minha Escola application. The failure occurred during a test carried out by Pasta’s technical area on specific Seduc devices. As soon as the mistake that led to the installation of the app on devices connected to institutional Google accounts was identified, the reversal was triggered by sending requests to delete the application. The user can also delete the app themselves if they prefer. Seduc regrets what happened and reinforces that the appropriate measures are being adopted”, informed the folder.
According to the LGPD, the provision of sensitive user data is, in general, prohibited and sharing is provided for in specific cases, focused on security.
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Source: CNN Brasil
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