Firms Verify Online IDs Via Schools

Companies selling services to protect children and teenagers from sexual predators on the Internet have enlisted the help of schools and teachers to verify students' personal information. Those companies are also sharing some of the information with Web sites, which can pass it along to businesses for use in targeting advertising to young audiences. Amid continuing parental and political attention focused on keeping K-12 students safe online, some companies are providing services that aim to ensure adults can't pose as young people in cyberspace, and that minors can't claim to be older than they are. But such firms' use of schools to verify students' ages and other information worries some educators and observers. The practice, they say, raises privacy concerns--although it apparently is within the bounds of the main federal law that safeguards students' educational data--as well as ethical worries about schools' role in assisting for-profit businesses. In some cases, schools earn money by participating in the process.