Resources

Personalization—the use of personal data to tailor content and services to individual users—sits at the center of today’s most contested debates about youth and digital technology. This report provides a comprehensive framework for understanding personalization in youth online experiences, examining its mechanisms, benefits, risks, mitigations, and the emerging legislative and regulatory landscape.

Digital literacy, loosely defined as competency with a range of digital technologies, is a key skill for full social and democratic participation, but it is a difficult thing to measure across a large population. Having accurate data about how people use technology can inform how educators, policymakers, and technology companies make decisions and are especially […]

This comparative reference chart covers seven PETs — Differential Privacy, Synthetic Data, Federated Learning, Trusted Execution Environments, Secure Multi-Party Computation, Homomorphic Encryption, and Zero-Knowledge Proofs — across six dimensions: approach, benefits, limitations, example use case, data utility impact, and implementation complexity. The chart is designed as a standalone reference for practitioners who need to quickly […]

Educational research answers questions about program effectiveness, equity, access, and long‑term outcomes. EdTech vendors typically need student-level data and enough context to ensure their research is effective and accomplishes their goal. At the same time, disclosing student data to EdTech vendors may increase the risk of reidentification. The risk is not limited to direct identifiers […]

Educational research answers questions about program effectiveness, equity, access, and long‑term outcomes. Researchers typically need student-level data and enough context to ensure their research is effective and accomplishes their goal. At the same time, disclosing student data to researchers may increase the risk of reidentification. The risk is not limited to direct identifiers such as […]

This report describes the Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) most relevant to State Education Agencies (SEAs) and Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) environments, explains what each can and cannot do analytically and operationally, and provides use case guidance for matching PET selection to specific workflows. PETs complement rather than replace strong governance — data minimization, least-privilege access, […]

What Can States Learn From New York’s Approach to Student Privacy? New Future of Privacy Forum analysis highlights the benefits of New York’s regional, shared-services approach to implementing its student privacy policies. Work Smarter Not Harder provides an overview of New York’s current education privacy laws and infrastructure, which is centered on regional shared service organizations. […]

The Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) welcomes the opportunity to submit comments in response to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) to address “unfair” or “deceptive” practices involving fees for online food retail and food delivery platforms.1 FPF is a global non-profit organization dedicated to advancing principled and pragmatic data […]

The Educator’s Guide to Student Privacy, written by teachers for teachers, covers several topics, including: Why should classroom teachers care about student data privacy? There are legal and ethical restrictions that impact districts, school, and teachers. Traditionally, student data consisted of things like attendance, grades, discipline records, and health records. Access to that data used to […]

As governments around the world strengthen protections for children online, Brazil’s “Digital ECA” (Estatuto Digital da Criança e do Adolescente) represents a major step forward in regulating digital environments for young people. In this recorded discussion, FPF Policy Counsel for Global Privacy Maria Badillo and FPF Policy Counsel for U.S. Legislation Daniel Hales, moderated by […]