FARO stands for Frontline Record of Online Harms. Technology-related harm usually reaches the public one case at a time: a school in one country, a family in another, each easy to treat as an exception. This directory puts those cases side by side to help grassroots actors see where others face the same issues they do, and to help governments and regulators see the bigger picture of the harms occurring. The directory describes what its records contain. It does not measure how often these harms occur, and a country with few records may simply have little published about it.
How to use this directory: Topics are filterable for FARO reports that have already been created based on these incidents. The harms and response patterns shown are those featured there. To see the incidents used in a country-specific report, choose that country under Country report. Pick a pattern or evidence type to see on the map which countries have matching records. Click a country on the map or in the list to see its records below. Use the filter to search for keywords or specific sources.
Shaded countries have at least one record. Choose a pattern to see where it appears.
At least one matching recordNo matching recordSelected country
Shading shows only that a country has at least one record in this directory that matches your selection, and every shaded country looks the same on purpose. It says nothing about how often these harms occur there. Pattern filters only cover records classified so far, and small countries are easy to miss on a map, so use the list as well.
15 high school students suspended after altering grades on register in Italy
In December 2019, teachers at a high school in Italy noticed that grades on the register did not match the ones they had given. The suspected students were called in and confessed; 15 students were suspended with the obligation to attend lessons and were reported to the postal police for unauthorised access (an allegation). Teachers first noticed the discrepancy. Responses acted on the students. Whether register access security was changed is not stated in the source.
15-year-old boy in Italy allegedly altered grades on the electronic register; Ministry says its own systems were not breached
A 15-year-old boy is alleged to have changed grades, turning 5s into 6s, from his home in Italy, and to have interfered with tanker routes in the Mediterranean; he was identified through an investigation coordinated by the Polizia Postale and the prosecutor and was reported (an allegation). The Ministero dell'Istruzione e del Merito said checks showed no access to its own systems, that the case most likely involved the electronic register, and that each school chooses and contracts its register supplier autonomously. The Ministry said it was in contact with the Polizia Postale and urged schools to keep attention on digital security. Who first noticed is not stated in source beyond a complaint that opened the file. Whether the register was changed is not stated in source.
34 high school students tried for altering attendance and grades on register using stolen teacher passwords
In the 2015/2016 school year, students at a high school in the Marche region, Italy, used stolen teachers' passwords to change attendance and grades on the school register. The high number of changes made the teaching staff suspicious. The school head reported the incident to the postal police, whose investigation identified 23 girls and 11 boys.
Accepted tasks left unpaid after project owner withdrew
A group of data workers completed accepted tasks but received no payment after a project owner withdrew.
Source: Data Labelers Association
Date source link verified: 22/10/2026
Gig workers pay locked
Not statedBlog/personal post
Active contributor permanently deactivated with about 100 dollars withheld
A reviewer with a 5.0 rating says they lost account access and were permanently deactivated for an alleged guidelines violation with no details. They say about 100 dollars in earnings was withheld and support called the decision final. BBB shows no company response to the review.
Activists project slaughterhouse footage to primary school pupils during classroom talk booked as animal welfare lesson
Members of the activist group Anonymous for the Voiceless, invited by email for an educational talk on animal welfare, connected computers in a primary school classroom in Sardinia, Italy, and projected graphic footage of industrial slaughterhouses and intensive farming. According to the report, many children cried, showed distress and tried to close their eyes, and teachers removed the group from the building. The head teacher said the school had been deceived, and a parent who is a municipal councillor said he intended to file complaints.
Ads, games and paid partner services inside the ClasseViva register app (“MyTools”)
A parent of a high-school student in Italy first raised the issue, and a national newspaper published an investigation in March 2025 showing the MyTools section held games, links to commercial sites and paid services such as student loans and study trips. The Minister of Education called it unacceptable, and in April 2025 the Ministry sent all schools and regional school offices a circular barring marketing, transfers of data to third parties, mini-games and ad banners in registers, and requiring register data to be portable. Spaggiari made the partner services unavailable until each school re-confirmed its consent, keeping only educational content. The responses acted on the company and its tool, and on every school nationally. The source says the tool was changed.
Adult male worker’s Outlier payment stuck after identity document rejected
An adult male worker received payment from an AI training platform into a wallet account, which was then limited after his identity document was rejected as an unsupported format. He states he has no other accepted identification and requested a one-time withdrawal to retrieve his funds and close the account, but support has not offered a workable solution.
Adult User in Nigeria’s Access to Funds Blocked After PayPal Verification Failure
An adult user in Nigeria attempted to verify their account following a digital payment platform's relaunch announcement. The system repeatedly generated error messages, resulting in the user's access to their money being blocked without explanation.
Agent-distributed cash withdrawal delayed after worker had requested it
A data worker withdrew earnings through a Nigerian payment platform using local agents and experienced a delayed payout.
Source: Data Labelers Association
Date source link verified: 22/10/2026
Gig workers pay locked
ColombiaNews article
AI Data Annotator in Colombia Suffers Financial Loss and Psychological Distress
A 35-year-old female data annotator worked under precarious conditions training generative artificial intelligence models. She was exposed to highly disturbing content, such as suicide and violence, for over 12 hours a day without psychological support. Additionally, following a payment system update, one of her subcontracted employers failed to pay her approximately $900, which represented three months of her labor.
AI trainer spends hundreds of unpaid hours on onboarding tasks for projects that disappeared
A freelance worker spent hundreds of hours completing over 80 unpaid onboarding processes, training tutorials, and assessment tasks required by an AI training platform. After finishing the extensive training requirements, the projects disappeared entirely from the worker's dashboard, resulting in zero compensation for their labor and causing severe emotional distress due to a lack of communication from the platform.
AI training worker banned before payout, week of earnings withheld
A worker on an AI training platform says they usually earned 100 to 200 dollars a week, then reached about 500 dollars in one week and were banned before the payout. They say the platform later emailed to confirm the payment would be withheld. They say they had no violation, VPN or proxy use.
AI training worker’s balance blocked in wallet verification after account ban
A worker on an AI training platform has 1,023 dollars blocked in a payment wallet’s identity verification after the platform banned their account. The source relays this as one worker’s report and gives no further detail.
AI-driven private school criticized for student surveillance practices
A private school generated questionable AI lessons and extensively monitored students through video systems leading staff to raise concerns. This data was stored in a Google Drive and available to anyone with the link.
Andorra – SafeSearch bypass exposes pupils to sexual content; nationwide iPad withdrawal
Several students at an Andorran primary school used school-provided digital devices to access sexual content shortly before the Sant Joan holiday. The incident was discovered by a teacher during school activities and reported to school leadership, which escalated the matter to the Ministry of Education. According to government spokesperson Guillem Casal, the access was linked to a change in Google's security policies that affected existing protections on the devices. The ministry removed the devices and plans to review and reconfigure them to ensure they are properly secured before the start of the next school year.
Source: Government of Andorra (Ministry of Education) / Diari d'Andorra
Annotator couple unpaid for six months by overseas annotation platform
A female data annotator and her husband annotated data for about a year. The platform operator stopped paying wages and six months later they had still received nothing.
Australian mother relied on school-recommended educational technologies without information about privacy risks
A mother of two in Murwillumbah, New South Wales, said she took part in remote education on trust that the school had looked into the privacy implications, and that she was not asked for consent or told how her children's rights might be protected or affected. She said she saw little the family could do about it anyway, because they were focused on making schooling work during the pandemic.
Bolivia – specialist warning on early pornography exposure across schools
A psychologist stated that he has observed children as young as seven or eight years old consuming pornography and reported associated behaviors including explicit sexual play, inappropriate touching of girls, and excessive masturbation among children in multiple schools. The statement was presented as a professional observation based on clinical and educational experience rather than as a single documented incident with a specific date, school, or technology pathway.
Byju’s refund for engineering prep course still unpaid two months after cancellation within trial window
An adult man signed up his brother and nephew, both male students, for a Byju's engineering preparation course in June 2022, paying a Rs 15,000 registration fee after months of telesales calls. The two students found the classes unsatisfactory and requested cancellation within ten days of the 15-day trial. Almost two months later the refund had not been paid, and he said the company only responded after he posted about it on social media.
Byju’s refunds only part of fees after 7th-grade female student leaves loan-financed tutoring course within trial period
In May 2022, a male relative enrolled a 12-year-old girl, a 7th-grade student, in a three-year Byju's tutoring course costing Rs 93,000, taking a loan option offered by the company after being told he could cancel within 15 days for a full refund. The student left the course after ten days when she was assigned teachers for four subjects instead of six. According to the report, the relative received only a Rs 5,000 refund, his first-month payment of about Rs 7,700 was not refunded, and his request to close the loan account was still pending.
California – Elementary school student accesses explicit content on school iPad; district-wide review
A female second-grade student in California, United States, accessed several adult pornography videos on her school-issued iPad, which her mother discovered. The local school district's IT department subsequently reviewed the browser history of iPads across five elementary schools and found that several other students in the same classroom had also accessed inappropriate content. A district associate superintendent described the likely pathway as beginning with a YouTube search that led to unfiltered results. The mother has requested extensive IT training for school staff responsible for monitoring student device use.
California Family Forced to Withdraw Children From School District Over Seesaw Data Harvesting Practices
A mother and her minor children were required to use the Seesaw Platform at a public school in California, USA, which generated and collected extensive private student data. This data was subsequently shared with numerous third-party entities without parental consent. As a result of these invasive data practices, the mother was ultimately forced to withdraw her children from the school district to protect their privacy and well-being.
Source: Superior Court of California, County of Orange
Canadian children’s educational website created behavioral advertising profiles of child users
CBC Kids, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation website recommended by Quebec's Education Ministry for pre-primary and primary children, sent children's data to 20 advertising and marketing companies through 29 ad trackers and 15 third-party cookies. Seven of those companies are registered in California as data brokers, and six offer services that match website visitors to identity records such as physical addresses and credit scores. The privacy policy says CBC profiles users and does behavioral advertising but does not name the companies receiving children's data. CBC told HRW its kids section is ad free and that several trackers were inactive or used for site performance, which HRW could not corroborate.
Child enrolled in mental health application without parental consent
A parent discovered that a school had automatically enrolled their child in a mental health application before notifying the family. According to the parent, the child's personal information had already been shared with a technology provider for research and development purposes. The consequence was unauthorized disclosure of the child's data. This is a personal interview. Source available to SHIELD.
Source: SHIELD - APS, Italy
Date source link verified: 17/10/2026
Technology in Education
SpainSHIELD Interview
Child experienced nightmares after viewing violent movie trailers at school
A parent reported that a 6-year-old child viewed violent movie trailers through a platform used at school. Following the exposure, the child began experiencing nightmares. The parent questioned the educational use of the platform after the incident. This is a personal interview. Source available to SHIELD.
Source: SHIELD - APS, Italy
Date source link verified: 16/10/2026
Technology in Education
ItalyNews article
Child sexual abuse video forwarded into middle school class chat from an online game chat
A child sexual abuse video reached a middle school class chat after a pupil forwarded material received in a game chat. The judicial authority ordered the content to be deleted from all the phones of the children involved, restoring the devices to factory settings.
Child targeted through publicly identifiable YouTube account
A child became fearful of digital harassment after misuse of a publicly identifiable YouTube account. This is a personal interview. Source available to SHIELD.
Source: SHIELD - APS, Italy
Date source link verified: 14/10/2026
Technology in Education
ItalyNews article
Children aged 7 to 8 reach pornographic sites on unfiltered PCs in an Italian primary school computer lab
During a supervised lesson, pupils in a primary school in Italy typed a search term into school PCs that had no filter and, as some pupils later reported, saw pornographic and fetish images; the teacher believed blocking was active. The parents' group Moige said it would ask the Ministry for an inventory of school IT security, and the Ministry said supplier choice, installation and maintenance are the responsibility of head teachers. Parents mobilised to find out what happened. Who first noticed is not stated in source beyond pupils later describing it. Whether a filter was installed afterwards is not stated in source.
Each record is a short summary of an incident described in a public source or collected through an interview by SHIELD or its partners. Records are reviewed by people before they appear here. Names and identifying details are removed: where a person appears, a role, age band and gender stand in for the name, and dates and places for minors are generalised. Every record links to its original source and shows the date that link was last checked. Records are classified with shared harm categories. The classification is SHIELD's own, so it can differ from how a source describes the incident.
Using the directory
You are welcome to read, link to and quote individual records with credit to FARO. Please do not copy, scrape or republish the dataset in bulk, or use it to train or test automated systems, without written permission. To ask for permission, use the SHIELD contact form. The original sources keep their own rights, and the link on each record leads to them.
How to cite
SHIELD-APS. Frontline Record of Online Harms (FARO). DIRECTORY-URL. Accessed [date]. To cite a particular selection, use the web address shown after you set the filters.
When you rely on the facts of an incident, cite the original source it links to. When you rely on the classification, the patterns or the country report, cite FARO. Please describe the records as documented incidents and do not present counts or country coverage as how often these harms happen. A country with few records may simply have little published about it.
Corrections and removals
If a record is wrong, a link no longer works, or you are described in a record and want it changed or removed, use the SHIELD contact form and include the title of the record. We review each request and update or remove the record where the request is justified.
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Know of a documented incident that belongs here? Send it through the incident form. A public source, such as a news report, a court or regulator decision, or a research publication, helps us verify it quickly. Submissions without a public source are kept anonymous and are not tied to named products or companies. Please leave out the names of children and of anyone who has not agreed to be named. Submissions are reviewed before anything is published, and sending one does not guarantee a record.
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The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
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The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
