The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
"Can ProctorU Be Trusted With Students' Personal Data?"
An interesting post by Paul Alan Levy (Public Citizen) on a demand letter ProctorU sent to UCSB.
See here for more; here's an excerpt:
The saga begins with a faculty association at the University of California at Santa Barbara, which heard about a potential problem with the data-sharing policies of ProctorU, a business that provides internet-based test monitoring services. The group took a look at the ProctorU privacy policies and did not like what they saw—in their view, it provided too little specificity about the limitations on data-sharing, and no protection for the data in the event that ProctorU were to go into bankruptcy or merge, possibly without restrictions on use of the data…. The faculty association voiced its concerns in a letter to the leadership of the University of California at Santa Barbara, urging them to stop using ProctorU and to avoid using "any other private service that either sells or makes students' data available to third parties." The letter was discussed in a story in the school's student newspaper.
It is apparently ProctorU's position that the faculty association's concerns are overwrought. I have no opinion about that dispute.
But instead of simply saying so, ProctorU hired attorney Lucas, who sent a blistering demand letter to the faculty group, accusing it of defamation, of linking to ProctorU's web site without permission (so what?), of copyright and trademark infringement, of a bad faith violation of the federal anti-cybersquatting law (ACPA), and of wilfully interfering with efforts to mitigate civil disruptions stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic….
You can read the demand letter itself here.
