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It all started when the pandemic began.
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More than 160 countries shut down schools for years.
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As a result, 87% of the global student population is homeschooled.
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Teaching and learning activities are
forced to switch to virtual classrooms.
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Since then, Educational Technology\
has taken the world by storm.
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Many of them receive funds unexpectedly,
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either from rapid customer growth
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or venture capital who are attracted to invest in them.
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However, the practice of online learning
is suspected to trigger many violations.
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Users' data is secretly collected
and sold to advertising companies.
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Narasi and Human Rights Watch,
along with 14 media from 23 countries
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collaborated to reveal this phenomenon.
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According to our findings, we found more
than 166 online learning platforms in 49 countries,
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with about 90 percent of them being engaged in data-mining
practices that compromise the privacy of children.
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And Indonesia is one of them.
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He wakes up at 06.30 in the morning, takes a shower, eats breakfast,then logs into the âclassroomâ at 8 a.m.
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Budi uses his break time
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to communicate with his friends and grandmother in Russia.
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âGood Morning, Budi!â
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He also enjoys watching cartoons on YouTube.
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After the online school is over, he will finish his English homework.
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In order to understand his homework,
he uses educational technology applications,
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then uploads his homework to his teacher's social media accounts.
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Unbeknownst to him, an invisible swarm of tracking technologies surveil
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Budiâs online life throughout his day.
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A few milliseconds after Budi entered his online class in the morning,
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the machine started tracking Budi's
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physical locationâfamily room or living room.
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His interactions with his classmates were monitored
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and then passed along on to advertising technology companies.
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Even though class was over, the tracker kept monitoring him
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while surfing internet sites and some apps.
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and then passed along on to advertising technology companies.
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and downloads personal details about his family
and friends.
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Budi and his mother are unaware that their activities are being watched.
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Both are simply attempting to follow school rules by using this app
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during the pandemic.
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To find out what really happened to Budi,
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we need to know how the app generates money.
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There are numerous options, such as selling paid apps,
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collecting commission fees on each transaction,
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or selling vouchers like online games do.
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Today we burn diamonds
tomorrow eat Indomie ha..ha..ha
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Aside from that,
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the most common thing apps do is data mining.
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Take a look at this simple overview to see how it works.
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To support app performance, several permissions must be approved by the user.
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Do you know that the Android system has hundreds of permission types?
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Some examples include GPS, camera,
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microphone, phone contacts, call logs,
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browser activity, and others.
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Data mining begins immediately once you agree to those terms and conditions.
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Data about you will accumulate, increasing day by day
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Consider this train as a sophisticated algorithm engine.
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This bunch of unorganized data then will be neatly organized.
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This is where your behavior is revealed.
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They can discover things
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like where you normally go, who your closest one are,
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what you enjoy, what you buy,
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and hundreds of other personal details
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This is how the educational technology company makes money.
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And several educational applications in Indonesia carry out this approach.
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We conducted research in 49 countries,
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where 165 applications in these countries except Morocco
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have all done data-mining of childrenâs personal information
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which is then sold to advertising companies,
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where these companies would then sell the data to their clients to target children.
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The government, through the Ministry of Education and Culture,
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recommended a number of educational technology companies
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for students in Indonesia to use shortly after the online learning process began.
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In the Circular Letter of the Minister of Education and Culture,
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it recommended six local educational technology companies,
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such as Kelas Pintar, Ruangguru, Quipper, Sekolah.mu,
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Zenius Education, and Rumah Belajar.
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These six applications were promoted by the Ministry of Education and Culture
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at the beginning of the pandemic to be used by students in Indonesia.
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We used two methods to analyze these six educational technology applications.
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First, static analysis.
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We obtain the data by examining the application's code
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and any instructions that may run once the app is opened.
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The tools used for static analysis are open source.
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Itâs Exodus and Pitheus.
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Second, dynamic analysis.
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By compiling and inspecting the running code
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in Android Developer Studio,
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we can watch the application work in real time.
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This analyzing process is assisted by the Defensive Lab Agency,
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a mobile digital security agency in France.
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The results of the analysis found
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several odd occurrences done by educational applications in Indonesia.
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For example, the app permissions.
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App permissions should, in theory, match the application's requirements.
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GPS access for transport apps or camera access for photo editing apps.
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But what if the requested access
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does not match the service?
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This is where the oddity lies.
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Three of the six apps require
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precise GPS access.
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Can be seen from these two access requests, and this.
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This data can be found in Rumah Belajar, Sekolah.mu, and Ruangguru.
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From these two app permissions, the applicator
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can retrieve precise location data for user activity.
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Pada keterangan apps permission di android store,
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Meanwhile, Ruangguru keeps its data collecting secret.
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The main question is, what is the purpose of GPS access in educational applications?
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in either instant when it came to GPS data.
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usually one can think of legitimate reasons why any mobile apps want precise location data.
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If you using Mapping Apps because of part of the functionality of the apps.
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For education apps, I have no single compelling genuine reasons
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why education apps want to know the precise location to that.
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That is not thing apps should to child provide more learning.
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So thats sentence means.
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This is the same for Indonesia as well
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These points are actually...several hubs
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in cities throughout Indonesia.
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These points will be able to support
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the children who are close to the GPS,
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so it can be something beneficial for our users,
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knowing that there is a nearby teacher
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who they can go to so they can do learning much better.
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Meanwhile, a written objection was submitted by Ruang Guru via email.
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They claim not to track
the exact location of the user.
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Because Ruangguru doesn't need a location
accurate for their products and services.
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They emphasized that in all versions, they never asked for GPS access.
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Another interesting permission to examine is the Read_Phone_State access
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requested by Ruang Guru,
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Kelas Pintar, Sekolahmu and Zenius.
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If this access is opened, the applicator can find out your child's phone number,
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cellular network information and the status of ongoing calls.
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Oleh Ruang Guru dan Kelas Pintar,
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Why?
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Because they also request access to call logs and contact numbers.
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These three combinations of read_phone_state,
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call logs dan read_contacts
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are enough to let the Ruangguru and Kelas Pintar know
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who your children's connections are.
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The reason we collect data from Read Phone State Permission Access
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is to add data points
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that we can collect for continuous improvement hours. Digital products and services,
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more or less. In order to make it easier for these students
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to participate in all of our services.
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We can expand the learning experience
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by opening access
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to their contacts so they can easily just choose
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which friends they could invite from Zenius.
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join the referral program.
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However, Ruang Guru gave a biased answer about Read_Phone_State.
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They denied requesting or using this data.
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However, they admit that they are able to remove the access in the next version release.
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As for the call logs, they openly denied it. And again,
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they insist that this objection is based on the permissions on Google Play, which they have no authority to change .
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The next question is,
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if these data were collected and sold to advertising companies,
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will the individual identity in it be removed?
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Ruangguru's privacy policy in this section on disclosing personal data is interesting to note.
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We do not disclose information about identifiable individuals,
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but we may provide them with aggregated information about our users.
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Aggregate information, thatâs the keywords.
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They want to convey that aggregates are numerous and not directed at specific persons.
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Our findings contradict Ruang Guru's claim.
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They were proven to collect every usersâ Android Advertising ID (AAID)
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With AAID, developers and Google ad network
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can identify our mobile phones among hundreds of millions Android devices.
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With this thing called AAID, they can provide ads that match our interests and behavior.
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It means that not only data behavior, they only send the subject or who owns the data.
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Ruang Guru transfers a bulk of AAID to other parties, according to the Defensive Lab.
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The capacity to collect Advertising ID conducted by Ruang Guru
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is just one of five applicators who collected Advertising IDs..
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However, only sekolahmu,
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Zenius
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and Quipper, out of the six apps, openly admit to using Advertising ID.
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he rest of them, Ruangguru,
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Rumah Belajar
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and Kelas Pintar, they all completely covered up this action.
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Through written confirmation in the email, Quipper denied that they collected Advertising ID.
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Ruang Guru also denied the allegation.
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They denied collecting personal information about their users.
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On the other hand,
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Zenius and Sekolah.mu openly admit that they collected the data
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for business development.
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As for the technical aspect, we have to get back to finding out
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the technical details in an engineering way.
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But what we want to ensure is that and that's the goal,
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as I said earlier. But for the implementation details for this one, we have to get back anyway.
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Basically, we see that
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when we ask for consent from child users,
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Pada dasarnya kita juga
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Secondly, for business, we actually use Ads from apps like Google.
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Secara posisi memang ada ID-nya yang di generate
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For instance, we provide advertisements or information
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on further learning activities or further packages
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related to the user's learning
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activities for other occasions.
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ctually, the ID collection is carried out there.
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But again, this is more of our internal interests.
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For example, we make another program whose purpose is to learn as well.
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Dibandingkan lima aplikasi lain,
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Not only Advertising ID,
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they also collect users' IMEI.
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The IMEI is the phone's unique identifier. It is irreplaceable.
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Thatâs why IMEI is very personal.
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Law enforcement frequently uses IMEI access to track a case.
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AAID and IMEI are explicitly prohibited from being deposited
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if its users are children, according to Google's child privacy policy.
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Children are the main users of these apps.
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So, how does the practice keep running?
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When it comes to appropriations,
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I think if asked what is the designation for?
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Yes indeed from the business strategy itself.
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When talking about business strategy in the end
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we also can't let go of whether
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If this student has learned
something, we don't need
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to follow it, so he will
follow the agreed steps?
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Precisely if it is
asked that is part
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of how the business
strategy itself.
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Which should be the question, if I say so
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We are not thrown as executors.
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This means that even if there is such a concern, yes,
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there are things that are approx
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a concern for the government or anyone representing this.
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If from the point of view of the children
it doesn't seem right and doesn't fit,
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to get the data to be like that,
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yes, it means that the complaint must
be conveyed to the business partner itself.
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not us as the business entity.
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Because if we see it as part of a strategy.
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What we do is implement the strategy
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And if the partners can
submit the data and incidentally
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it is finished, compliance is
complete within one country
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I thought it was no problem with us.
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This company can sell and send childrenâs personal data to advertising companies.
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This can be seen in technical analysis by looking at the software development kit (SDK)
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data incorporated in the application.
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That data is usually used to analyze app performance or track bugs and crashes.
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Yet, some might be deposited for profiling analysis and, eventually, targeted advertising.
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Some programs' SDKs have been identified
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transmitting data to advertising marketing companies,
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such as Ruang Guru and Zenius to AppsFlyer,
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a multinational company headquartered in Silicon Valley, USA.
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Or Kelas Pintar to Adjust - a German company.
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Also Sekolahmu to Snowplow, a company established in London, UK.
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Or your school at Snowplow
based in London, England.
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Actually our main application
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it doesn't use Snowplow
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the only connection to Snowplow
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so we have one payment gateway
that we work with using Snowplow
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We make the payment gateway
as one of the payment options
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Basically Appsflyer is for data analysis
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And CRM (customer relationship management )
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Then we use Clevertap
for the aggregated data
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According to Ruang Guru,
AppsFlyer's third-party status is solely
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used to track marketing attribution
activity. Also fraud protection.
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Even though he acknowledged that there was
a transfer of data on the Ruangguru flyer
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apps, he argued that personal data is in the
form of aggregate data, not personal data.
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But it would be strange if it was done by a government application.
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As an example, Rumah Belajar collects and sends children's data to advertising companies.
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Defensive Lab's investigations show how this data was blatantly
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sent to the domain DoubleClick.net
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which is clearly an advertising company.
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Rumah Belajar is a tax-funded educational application managed by the Ministry of Education and Culture.
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What is the Ministry of Education's response?
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Sebelumnya terima kasih atas informasi
yang diberikan dari teman-teman Narasi
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Previously, thank you for the
information provided from Narasi friends
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tapi perlu kami sampaikan di sini bahwa
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but we need to say here that
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Rumah belajar itu tidak ada kerjasama
apapun dengan perusahaan iklan
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The learning house does not have any
cooperation with advertising companies
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Jadi sadar bahwa ini layanan pemerintah
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So be aware that this is a government service
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yang kita berikan secara gratis cuma-cuma kepada masyarakat
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which we provide free of charge to the community
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dan kita tidak punya kepentingan
mengambil keuntungan dari pihak ketiga
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and we have no interest
in taking advantage
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of third parties, let
alone commercial ones
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Jadi memang kita tidak ada perjanjian apapun
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So we really don't have any agreement
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Terhadap..
Apa namanya..
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Against.. What's the name..
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Tadi yang disampaikan terkait AAID,
ataupun..
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What was conveyed earlier
was related to AAID, or...
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yang bersumber dari layanan aplikasi tersebut.
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sourced from the application service.
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Itu saja yang bisa kami sampaikan.
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That's all we can say.
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Beberapa saat kemudian
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A few moments later
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Eh kami terus terang tidak pernah,
atau..
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Uh we frankly never, or..
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Sepengatahuan saya ya.
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To my knowledge yes.
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Kami tidak pernah memotret
dan melihat aktifitas semacam itu
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We have never photographed
or seen such activity
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jadi kalau jika ini temuan baru
dari teman-teman Narasi
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so if this is a new
finding from Narasi friends
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it is actually useful for us
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untuk kita kemudian melakukan perbaikan-perbaikan
di sisi aplikasi Rumah Belajar
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for us to then make improvements
on the Learning House application side
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Jadi ini malah informasi baru yang kami terima
oleh Pusdatin terutama
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So this is actually new information
that we received especially from Pusdatin
00:18:33
terkait dengan aktivitas tersebut.
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related to that activity.
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Malah nanti kami jadikan dasar
untuk lakukan perbaikan.
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In fact, we will make it the
basis for improvement later.
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Yang jelas konsen kami adalah apapun
yang jadi pengamanan perlindungan anak
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What is clear is that our concern is
anything that safeguards child protection
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pasti posisi kami jelas akan berdiri di titik itu.
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surely our position will clearly stand at that point.
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Rumah Belajar's privacy policy clearly states that data is
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deposited for analysis and then returned as targeted adverts for its users.
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According to HRW's findings, among all government-owned education applications
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in other nations they researched,
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Indonesia is the only one that openly acknowledges selling this data.
00:19:10
his application made by the government is funded by the State and taxes
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Why should they collect this data.
00:19:18
If it's private companies that don't get money from the government, where do they come from? if don't sell data
00:19:25
his government has absolutely no reason for them to steal children's data.
00:19:33
The practice of stealing children's information
00:19:36
via educational applications is dilemmatic, especially in Indonesia.
00:19:38
From the beginning, these apps have clearly stated
00:19:41
that they will process their usersâ dataâthe majority of whom are children, for advertising purposes.
00:19:48
On the other hand, Indonesia's privacy laws are very weak.
00:19:51
There is no clear data regulation in general.
00:19:55
he statement from one of the CEOs clearly illustrated
00:19:58
that the weakness of the regulator and the carelessness of the user will be used as a scapegoat.
00:20:03
- So you put more emphasis
00:20:07
- the position in the wrong
context means it's in the user right?
00:20:10
Go back to the user
and back to their controls.
00:20:13
And the last one,
as I said earlier.
00:20:17
In the end it was.. Again..
00:20:21
We are a business entity
00:20:23
And the way we do business
is to agree with partners
00:20:27
and when we talk about compliance
00:20:30
yes it (is in) his partner.
00:20:31
so is the control. (on partner)
