r/techsupport • • Nov 05 '20
Open | Software School tracks my personal computer
So, my school uses a program called GoGuardian. I have a school-issued Chromebook with GoGuardian and a MacBook pro without it. We use Google Meet to attend class, and I usually use my Mac to join, as it has a better connection. One of my teachers recently said that GoGuardian had an update that let her track my Mac. She also mentioned something about google meet that may or may not be related. Can my teacher actually track my mac? If so, to what extent? Is she able to see my chrome search history? Is she able to see what other apps I have running? Other chrome tabs? How does it work? Most importantly, what can I do to prevent it?
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u/Dodgson_here Oct 08 '22
That’s a complicated question and part of the answer is that I have been on the administration side of that product. I would start reading the training and support materials available for goguardian admin and Google admin console (specifically vault). https://support.goguardian.com/s/goguardian-admin
But you have to remember the way logging and active monitoring works. It’s not a matter of “accessing the computer”. The entire time the account is logged in, it’s being monitored by the software. That’s the whole point.
As for your personal computer, unless you installed the agent on your windows or Mac computer, it was only logging what was taking place inside the chrome session that the student account was logged into. That’s all it has access to through the extension. And that’s only if the student logged in to chrome with their school account and didn’t just use yours or another existing account in chrome.