Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

Its not true. I only have a correct source in danish: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.berlingske.dk&#x2F;samfund&#x2F;et-centralt-vaerktoej-for-skoleelever-blev-udraabt-som-forbudt-i-hele" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.berlingske.dk&#x2F;samfund&#x2F;et-centralt-vaerktoej-for-...</a><p>But only one local county have been forbidden from processing personal data on school chromebooks as they did not do any analysis of the consequences.

If anyone needs a good example of the: 1. click bait title 2. primitive advertisement, all in one place, this article is a great example.<p>Was Gmail banned in Denmark schools? Obviously not, there is some regulation in one of the counties and it was about chromebook usage because of some privacy concerns. One. County.<p>Article is written by a company which is a direct competitor of Gmail (they are email service too) and are apparently searching for some topic they can use to get some publicity. Nothing bad in itself, but lies are lame.<p>And no, nobody is going to switch from Gmail to tutanota, because nobody wants mediocre user interface, be unable to search emails and force others to use some particular service to decrypt emails.<p>Even with encrypted emails, that&#x27;s just the beginning of the privacy story. If I am sending encrypted email to Bin Laden or to abortion clinics it does not help much that the content is encrypted.

Now let&#x27;s ban MSFT Office365 too. It&#x27;s of zero use to teach whatever to the kids.

I&#x27;ve been thinking of ditching Gmail for myself and my business, but what true alternatives are there? I already have O365, but am not particular keen on using Exchange. I&#x27;m basically only using Gmail and Calendar.<p>Any e-mail providers based out of the EU, worth mentioning?

Having until August 3 to entirely complete the transition seems incredibly rough? How can that possibly be a reasonable situation?<p>I&#x27;m absolutely all for privacy, but I also wonder if the EU alternatives (e.g. Tutanota as per article) will be able to withstand e.g. state sponsored attacks as well as Google.

How concretely-grounded are these privacy concerns?<p>I know we all love to hate Google, but my impression is they take the privacy of email extremely seriously at this point (eg, no longer using it for ads).<p>Sure, I don&#x27;t trust Google that much and I know others trust their brand even less, but is there hard evidence of misuse of Gmail user data?

About time - many schools in Denmark is now offering free Chromebooks to students. Wonder what they&#x27;ll do with them now.

This is about privacy and only privacy. However corporate interests in the US will interpret the EU banning Google Docs&#x2F;Workspace and Office365 as protectionism and lobby for retaliatory protectionist measures against EU companies.<p>Which EU company will soon get a multi-billion dollar fine by the US government?

Sadly, too often data protection authorities just ban stuff before providing viable alternatives? I do understand there are issues with privacy shield or gpdr.<p>For all those people suggesting OSS alternatives, it is difficult. Finding talent (yes, the govt jobs do not pay like private) to install, run, maintain suite of office-based is close to impossible. They tried at our school - as the board tried to ban Teams while they chat in WhatsApp or zoom meetings. We tried SoGo (OSS) calendar - it just sucks. Sync does not happen. The solution always is to restart phone or try later.<p>These may work for individuals. Not for organisations unless huge number of talent moves to OSS type organisations (tutanota or etc).

Is this going to be a daily thread? I swear the comments are the same too

“Co” seems to be Google cloud services… is that just a translation issue?

Along these lines -- would love to know what the marketplace for all of the data collected on students from the myriad of online-learning platforms schools rushed to implement over the past couple years while homeschooling replaced in-person education. Target the smartest kids, who may go to the best schools, and earn the highest salaries and buy the most stuff. You&#x27;ve got to figure there&#x27;s a huge market of buyers for this data.

I think back at my days in college, when a bunch of the computer science lab professors and postdocs had basically unaudited root access by design to all of the college&#x27;s email and Unix logs... Or later, when I worked at an ISP and saw nominative clickstream data being casually handed over on USB sticks... I don&#x27;t miss local control.

[dupe]<p>Like the 4th post about this news from almost 2 weeks ago

Related: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32108164" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32108164</a>

I&#x27;m under the impression that we (Denmark) are pretty random in what we think is important about privacy and IT security.. These ideas were probably strongly influenced by lobbyists from the main IT service providers, which are privately owned, and yet runs a large amount of out infrastructure. It&#x27;d be very much in their interest to have the goverment order some bespoke, insanely complicated&#x2F;delayed&#x2F;expensive system to be made.

What&#x27;s the replacement?

Unless Denmark or the EU want to setup an actual competitor, there is no private alternative out there.

This is basically European protectionism under the guise of privacy.<p>My guess is that within a few years (or even sooner), you will be reading about a massive breach of student data from whatever alternative they choose to go with.