Edmodo Has Removed Tracking From Their Web Site For Students and Teachers
2 min read
Last night, I heard from representatives at Edmodo in response to my post on ad trackers. I need to emphasize at the outset that the speed of their response here is a very positive sign. I published my post around 9:00 AM on a Saturday, and I heard from them less than 12 hours later on Saturday night.
In their email to me, they shared that the code and tracking behavior I observed was left over from testing. While they investigate solutions, they are both removing this code, and turning off ads. This change is already in place. As of this writing, there no longer appears to be any tracking of teacher or student accounts. I have done a quick visual examination to verify this with my test accounts.
This is the right step to take. Edmodo deserves credit for making this step, and making it so quickly. I am hoping and optimistic that this is a permanent change.
UPDATE: May 14, 2017
I have heard additional details from the team at Edmodo about their technical implementation. Although my original post was not about their Beta Sponsored Content program, they wanted to be very clear that, for that program, they used Doubleclick's COPPA-compliant flag. The information they conveyed to me is included below:
"(f)or the ads we recently started serving to Edmodo users through Doubleclick, we turned on the COPPA-compliant tag. The COPPA-compliant tag is supposed to prevent behavioral tracking. We have turned off those ads until we can confirm that the COPPA-compliant tag is working properly to prevent behavioral tracking."
END UPDATE
