GoGuardian is an educational technology company founded in 2014 and based in

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

. The company's services monitor student activity online, filter content, and alert school officials to possible suicidal or self-harm ideation.

Product history

GoGuardian was founded in 2014 and is based in Los Angeles, CA. Its feature set includes computer filtering, monitoring, and management, as well as usage analytics, activity flagging, and theft recovery for

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devices. GoGuardian also offers filtering functionality for third-party tools such as

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

. On June 2015, GoGuardian reported it was installed in over 1,600 of the estimated 15,000 school districts in the United States. In January 2015,

Los Angeles Unified School District Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is a public school district in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is the largest public school system in California in terms of number of students and the 2nd largest public school district in ...

(LAUSD) chose GoGuardian to support their 1:1 device rollout program. This provides LAUSD device tracking and grade-level-specific filtering, and facilitates compliance with the

Children's Internet Protection Act The Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) is one of a number of bills that the United States Congress proposed to limit children's exposure to pornography and explicit content online. Background Both of Congress's earlier attempts at restr ...

(CIPA). In September 2015, the company released GoGuardian for Teachers, a tool to monitor student activity and control student learning. In January 2016, GoGuardian announced the launch of Google Classroom integration for GoGuardian for Teachers. In May 2018, GoGuardian was acquired by private equity firm Sumeru Equity Partners and appointed Tony Miller to their board of directors. In August 2018, GoGuardian launched Beacon, a software system installed on school computers that analyzes students' browsing behavior to alert people concerned of students at risk of suicide or self-harm. In November 2020, GoGuardian merged with Pear Deck.

Student privacy

GoGuardian products allow teachers and administrators to view and snapshot students' computer screens, close and open browser tabs, and see running applications. GoGuardian can collect information about any activity when users are logged onto their accounts, including data originating from a student's webcam, microphone, keyboard, and screen, along with historical data such as browsing history. This collection can be performed whether students connect from school-provided or personally-owned devices. Parents have raised privacy concerns over this data collection, claiming the software is

spyware Spyware (a portmanteau for spying software) is software with malicious behaviour that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user—for example, by violating their privac ...

. In 2016, researcher Elana Zeide raised the concern that the use of GoGuardian software for suicide prevention, though "well-meaning", could result in "overreach". Zeide further noted that legitimate personal reasons could motivate a student to wish to search for sensitive information in private. According to Zeide, this concern is compounded by the fact that school devices may be the only devices for lower-income students. American School Counselor Association ethics chair Carolyn Stone said that GoGuardian's ability to track web searches conducted at home is "intrusive" and is "conditioning children to accept constant monitoring" as normal. Until October 2015, GoGuardian software was able to track keystrokes and remotely activate student webcams. GoGuardian said that the features were removed as part of its "ongoing commitment to student privacy." GoGuardian technical product manager Cody Rice stated in 2016 that schools had control over GoGuardian's collection and management of data and that no client had complained about privacy.

Recognition

* Inc. 500 * Deloitte's Fast 500 ** In 2018, GoGuardian was named as the 27th fastest growing technology company in North America. *

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30 Under 30 ** In January 2016, two of the company's co-founders, Aza Steel and Advait Shinde, were named to ''

'' magazine's annual "30 Under 30" list in the Education category. * International Design Awards Gold: GoGuardian Teacher * 2016 Awards of Excellence Tech and Learning

References

Internet safety Child safety Companies based in Los Angeles Software companies based in California Security companies of the United States Computer security software Software companies of the United States

Product history

Student privacy

Recognition

References

Further reading