Securly on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
Securly, Inc. is an educational software company based in 
San Jose, California
San Jose, officially the City of San José ( ; ), is a cultural, commercial, and political center within Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. With a city population of 997,368 and a metropolitan area population of 1.95 million, it is ...
and incorporated in Delaware
The Delaware General Corporation Law (sometimes abbreviated DGCL), officially the General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware (Title 8, Chapter 1 of the Delaware Code), is the statute of the Delaware Code that governs corporate law in the U. ...
. It develops and sells internet filter
An Internet filter is software that restricts or controls the content an Internet user is capable to access, especially when utilized to restrict material delivered over the Internet via the Web, Email, or other means. Such restrictions can be appl ...
s and other technologies which primary
Primary or primaries may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Music Groups and labels
* Primary (band), from Australia
* Primary (musician), hip hop musician and record producer from South Korea
* Primary Music, Israeli record label
Work ...
and secondary schools use to monitor students' web browsing, web searches, video watching, social media posts, emails, online documents, and drives. It was founded in January 2013.
Reception
Securly has been heavily criticized by people for a lot of reasons, such as providing tools that let schools block websites and the ability to invade students' privacy. As a result, videos have shown exploits to show how to get around or bypass its filtering and monitoring, but almost all of them have been patched. In 2017, the ''Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The ''Milwaukee Journal Sentinel'' is a daily morning broadsheet printed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where it is the primary newspaper and also the largest newspaper in the state of Wisconsin, where it is widely read. It was purchased by the G ...
'' reported on Arrowhead High School
Arrowhead High School is a high school located in Merton Town, Wisconsin (with a Hartland, Wisconsin post address). Sitting on of land, the school has two campuses, a north campus and a south campus. Juniors and seniors attend the north campus, ...
's implementation of Securly, which received large backlash from parents and students. The software monitors activity of school-owned equipment and students' own devices that are connected to their school's Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...
. Points of contention included the risk of Securly being hacked, the potential sale of browsing and search history to insurance companies and advertisers, and general privacy concerns. Securly said that they "monitor students' internet searches and social media posts; flag them for references that suggest such things as drug use, cyberbullying or suicide; and share students' internet browsing histories with parents who want them." Common Sense Media
Common Sense Media (CSM) is an American nonprofit organization that reviews and provides ratings for media and technology with the goal of providing information on their suitability for children.
director Girard Kelly said events like the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the Equifax data breach show the need to protect students' data, arguing Securly does the opposite by normalizing a "surveillance state
Mass surveillance is the intricate surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population in order to monitor that group of citizens. The surveillance is often carried out by local and federal governments or governmental organizatio ...
" where students have to give up their data without their consent. In 2023, the parents of 2 California
California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
students filed a class action lawsuit
A class action
A class action is a form of lawsuit.
Class Action may also refer to:
* ''Class Action'' (film), 1991, starring Gene Hackman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
* Class Action (band), a garage house band
* "Class Action" (''Teenage R ...
against Securly, alleging that Securly collected students' private information without their permission and selling the information to third party vendors.
Securly says that its service allows schools to almost achieve compliance with state and federal requirements such as 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, along others such as preventing minors from hacking other ...
(CIPA). Securly has claimed its services help prevent school shooting
A school shooting is an Gun violence, armed attack at an educational institution, such as a primary school, secondary school, high school or university, involving the use of a firearm. Many school shootings are also categorized as mass shooti ...
s by blocking violent content, but it has been largely criticized for not providing much data that supports that claim. It has also been largely criticized for the content that it deems violent.
Securly also puts such blocked pages into categories, such as Games, Social Media, E-commerce/Shopping, and Gambling.In addition, keywords can be blocked as well.
Awards
In 2020, Securly won the EdTech breakthrough award for use of Artificial Intelligence for Student Safety.References
External links
* {{Official website, http://www.securly.com, name=Securly Homepage Content-control software Internet safety Educational technology companies of the United States Organizations based in California Organizations established in 2012 2012 establishments in California