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FARO Directory

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.

Countries

In the list but not drawn on the map: Multiple countries, Not stated.

Country: Pakistan Clear all

4 results

Cards List
Pakistan
Technology in Education
Academic research
Human Rights Watch
18/10/2026

MUSE, an app for kindergarten to fifth grade built by SABAQ Learning Systems and recommended by Pakistan's federal education ministry, was found by HRW to send children's data to Facebook and Google through six embedded SDKs. HRW said the app sends more data about children to Facebook and Google than it sends to itself, and that Facebook's SDKs log students' activity in the virtual classroom and send it with the child's advertising ID, Android ID and device information, which allows Facebook to tie the data together. MUSE's privacy policy does not disclose the practices HRW observed. MUSE told HRW it does not collect children-specific data and that the Google and Facebook SDKs gather usage data as data points, not about specific users.

Pakistan
Technology in Education
Academic research
Human Rights Watch
18/10/2026

HRW's forensic testing found that MUSE notified Facebook the moment the app was installed, and sent the child's advertising ID and device information to Facebook before the child had opened the app for the first time. This happens whether or not the child is logged into Facebook or has an account. HRW also conclusively found MUSE collecting and sending bridged identifiers (advertising ID with Wi-Fi MAC address) to Facebook, which bypasses privacy controls such as resetting the advertising ID.

Pakistan
Gig workers pay locked
Blog/personal post
Not stated
22/10/2026

An adult male freelance worker of over five years says his withdrawal of earnings from a freelance marketplace has been frozen for a month after he tried to link a bank account. He says support wrongly marked his active bank account as closed and the case has sat with a higher department for 30 days. He describes the money as his livelihood.

Pakistan
Technology in Education
Academic research
Human Rights Watch
18/10/2026

Taleemabad, a privately developed Pakistani learning app apparently designed for children with an estimated 1 million installs, was found by HRW to have the ability to collect children's precise location (including GPS, last known location and Wi-Fi network name), advertising IDs and IMEI numbers. It embeds Google and Facebook analytics SDKs. HRW listed it among nine apps potentially engaging in ID bridging, and Taleemabad did not respond to HRW's request for comment about it.

About the records

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.

Report an incident

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.