Students’ Personal Data Mismanaged; Data Sent to Foreign Businesses, Used to Update Apps

The Yomiuri Shimbun

1:00 JST, July 16, 2024

Local governments have authorized Recruit Co. — a provider of educational apps — to directly obtain public school students’ personal data and manage it, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.

The problem is connected to devices, such as personal computers and tablets, which elementary and junior high schools distribute to their students. Recruit sent some of the students’ personal data collected from its apps to foreign businesses or used the data to improve its other apps that were put up for sale, and the affected students’ parents or guardians were not given a sufficient explanation.

The education ministry plans to conduct a nationwide probe soon, believing some local governments have mismanaged the students’ personal data.

Most of the about 9 million elementary and junior high school students in Japan have access to devices, on which local governments have installed learning apps developed by private companies. Those apps collect students’ personal data, enabling each student to learn in a way tailored to their individual needs. However, included in the collected data are the students’ names, birth dates and percentage of correctly answered questions.

The education ministry insists that local governments must take the initiative to collect and manage students’ data and requires that they supervise app providers and tread carefully when storing data overseas, where Japanese laws may not be applicable.

But in some municipalities, Recruit obtains personal data directly from students and manages it itself after demanding parents or guardians agree to a privacy policy. Recruit provides the data to local governments, which entrust the company to manage the data.

Recruit then outsources the storage and management of the students’ personal data to overseas businesses in 13 countries and regions, including the United States, Europe and Israel. Recruit declined to disclose details about the outsourcing.

A Yomiuri Shimbun survey found that at least 14 local governments have introduced Recruit’s apps this fiscal year, and about 85,000 elementary and junior high school students use the apps. Some of the local governments were unaware of the overseas outsourcing and other improper management of students’ personal data.

An official of Benesse Corp., a provider of similar apps in about 9,500 schools nationwide, said, “We do not directly obtain students’ personal data, and we store what we do collect in Japan.”