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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: Turkey Clear all

6 results

Cards List
Turkey
Gig workers pay locked
Blog/personal post
Not stated
22/10/2026

An adult content creator who has received monthly royalty payouts from a stock-image service and a social video platform for over four years says his withdrawable balance dropped to zero after annual fee deductions. He says a royalty payout was then rejected by the payment platform and bounced back to the sender. Support closed his ticket as resolved without investigating, and he cannot reach his money.

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

A nine-year-old student in Istanbul and his mother told HRW that his teacher required him to use online learning platforms every day to be marked as attending school during Covid-19 closures. HRW's opening account of his school day describes tracking technologies on his school's online learning platform, including location tracking, advertising technology companies receiving information about his use of the virtual whiteboard, and a social media platform accessing his phone's contact list. The report says neither he nor his mother knew about this.

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

A teacher in Istanbul told a nine-year-old student and his mother that he had to use online platforms every day to be marked as attending school during Covid-19 closures. HRW concluded that in these countries, children could not give valid, meaningful consent to the processing of their data by government-mandated platforms, because they could not refuse to use them freely without detrimental effect and had no alternative means to access their education.

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

A mother in Istanbul told HRW that her son's teacher required all of the 8-year-old students in the class to use Facebook, and made her son open an account at age 8 to upload his homework. She said the teacher was now requiring Facebook for tests. Facebook's terms of service prohibit children under 13 from using the service. Her son told HRW his teacher also makes him download BiP and WhatsApp for school.

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

Eğitim Bilişim Ağı, an app developed by Turkey's Ministry of National Education for preschool, primary and secondary students during Covid-19 school closures, has no privacy policy; its privacy policy link points back to the home page of its website, which also has none. HRW's dynamic analysis detected students' Android advertising IDs sent to Google through googleadservices.com, which is operated by Google Ads, and app-measurement.com. HRW also found the app has the ability to access phone numbers, call logs, camera and microphone.

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

A mother in Istanbul told HRW that her son's teacher asked her to download BiP, a government-mandated messaging app for government and school use during the pandemic. She refused because she had heard the app was not secure in terms of data privacy, and told the teacher she had no space on her phone. She said the teacher then told her they could not communicate otherwise and blocked all the parents on WhatsApp, and that she has not been able to speak to him since.

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.