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.
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.
In the list but not drawn on the map: Multiple countries, Not stated.
Schools adopted an AI mental health monitoring platform and concerns were raised regarding accuracy privacy and automated assessment of students.
View sourceA 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.
View sourceA 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.
View sourceA 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.
View sourceA 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.
A class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of K-12 students, including a minor student plaintiff, alleging that Curriculum Associates generated, collected, used, and shared their personal information without consent through its i-Ready products. The complaint claims these practices violated federal and state privacy laws, including the Federal Wiretap Act, the California Invasion of Privacy Act, and the Massachusetts Right to Privacy Act [1.1].
View sourceK-12 students filed a class-action lawsuit against educational software provider Renaissance Learning, Inc. The lawsuit alleges that the company's platforms, including Star Assessments and Nearpod, generated, collected, used, and shared students' personal and behavioral data without consent. This unauthorized collection and tracking allegedly violated federal and state wiretapping and privacy laws, resulting in an unlawful invasion of the students' privacy.
View sourceEducation Week reported on Common Sense Media's first large-scale, demographically representative survey of US teen pornography use, which found meaningful rates of viewing during the school day and specifically on school-issued devices. The article also cites EdWeek Research Center data on the rapid growth of 1:1 school-issued device programs, particularly accelerated by pandemic-era remote learning, as context for why this exposure pathway has grown. This is a research-synthesis article rather than a single incident, aggregating survey data with practitioner commentary from school technology officers.
View sourceA parent reported that her 4th-grade female student accessed explicit content while using a school-issued iPad in a classroom at an elementary school. The parent stated that the devices, intended for lessons, were left accessible enough that a child could reach explicit material without deliberate searching. The school principal responded to the parent's concerns, though the school district's specific remediation steps are not detailed in available coverage.
View sourceA parent reported inability to opt out of school digital systems without educational consequences. This is a personal interview. Source available to SHIELD.
School officials demanded that a female student surrender her Facebook login credentials during a disciplinary matter, forcing her to grant access to her private communications and digital social life. The student filed a lawsuit against the school district, which resulted in a settlement and changes to school policies.
View sourceA mother reported that her 11-year-old son, a special-education student, was repeatedly shown pornography on a school iPad by older students during recess over a period of roughly three months in 2015. She said her son was threatened by an older student not to disclose what was happening, and that a school staff member reacted dismissively after he eventually reported it. The family filed a lawsuit against the school district seeking damages, alleging the district failed to adequately supervise students' iPad use and did not respond appropriately once the behavior was reported. The mother stated she believes other students were also exposed to pornography on school-issued iPads.
View sourceAn adult male freelancer reported receiving a 2,200 euro payment from a client, after which the digital wallet platform immediately limited his virtual account. Support informed him that the funds were frozen for 180 days without a specific reason, and his account was subsequently blocked, preventing him from logging in.
View sourceAccording to the FTC complaint, Edmodo collected names, email addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and persistent identifiers from students under 13 without verifiable parental consent, used the data for advertising, and retained it indefinitely until at least 2020. Edmodo stopped operating in the US around September 2022 during the investigation. The stipulated order carries a $6 million penalty suspended for inability to pay and binds the company if it resumes US operations, including a retention and deletion schedule.
View sourceDuring a class at a high school in the United States in February 2022, an employee plugged a personal computer into the classroom projector and a series of explicit images from what appeared to be an online image search were displayed, according to the superintendent. The employee was placed on leave, police were contacted, and counselling and guidance services were offered to affected students. The district said it was reviewing its policies on employees' personal devices in classrooms.
View sourceStudents across a school district in Illinois, United States were found to have accessed pornography on school-issued tablets, indicating a filter or policy failure affecting more than one student. The report describes district-level awareness of the issue and a response focused on reviewing device security settings. Specific student ages and the scale of the exposure are not detailed in available coverage. The case adds to a broader pattern of similar filter failures reported across multiple US districts.
View sourceA parent in Indiana, United States discovered that her 7-year-old daughter had recorded videos of herself after being exposed to pornographic images and videos found via a YouTube search on her school-issued iPad, which the child said she watched during recess in the classroom or gym. The parent, herself a teacher in a neighboring district, demonstrated that the same search produced drastically different, safe results on her own district's more securely configured Chromebook, and on a second district-issued iPad tested by investigative reporters. The school district did not answer specific questions about the incident but confirmed general information about its technology program. The parent withdrew her children from the district and went public to warn other parents.
View sourceA group of K-12 students and their parents filed a federal class-action lawsuit against Google LLC, alleging that the company's educational products, including Chromebooks, ChromeOS, and the Chrome browser, unlawfully generated, collected, used, and shared their personal data without consent [1.1]. The plaintiffs alleged that this unauthorized collection and sharing of their data resulted in severe privacy invasions, violating wiretap, computer access, and consumer protection laws while they used the devices for school.
View sourceA school-aged girl in California filed a lawsuit against Google LLC. Using her school-issued Chromebook, she created a Discord account and was targeted and sexually victimized by an anonymous user for weeks until her father discovered the abuse.
View sourceA group of K-12 students and their parents filed a lawsuit against educational technology company IXL Learning, alleging that the platform generated, collected, used, and shared students' personal and tracking information without consent. The software tracked student activity during school-required use, resulting in an invasion of privacy and unauthorized exposure of personal data. A federal judge denied the company's motion to force the dispute into private arbitration, ruling that schools cannot bind families to such terms.
View sourceA school-aged student in Utah, United States, developed a debilitating pornography addiction through cumulative exposure to harmful content on a school-issued Chromebook. The student's family filed a lawsuit against Google LLC, alleging that the device's design failed to block, and instead promoted, pornography to serve Google's data-monetization business model.
View sourceA male student in Pennsylvania developed a screen addiction that severely strained his relationship with his father. Despite his father's attempts to limit screen time by removing personal devices, the student bypassed these restrictions by watching online video content on his school-issued laptop.
View sourceA school district in California, USA, confirmed that a middle school student accessed the projectors in three classrooms to display racist images and an inappropriate video. Parents reported similar incidents in recent months, including one where a student allegedly streamed pornographic content. Parents noted that students were able to cast content from their mobile devices to classroom screens over the school's Wi-Fi network.
View sourceA minor developed a severe video game addiction after prolonged exposure to online video games designed with psychological engagement loops and reward systems. As a result, the child experienced physical injuries, severe emotional distress, academic decline leading to school absence, and extreme withdrawal symptoms including physical outbursts and rage. The child's parents filed a civil complaint against several video game developers and publishers, alleging that they intentionally designed their platforms to hook young users.
View sourceAn 8-year-old male third-grade student in North Carolina, USA, was shown by older students on a school bus how to access an age-inappropriate video game on his school-issued device, which subsequently led his mother to discover he could also reach sexually explicit images and content. After a school technology administrator assured her this was impossible, the mother demonstrated the bypass directly to the school's vice principal and sent explicit findings to the principal, who responded only that continued device use was necessary to avoid the child falling behind academically. The mother's account, which aired in a local TV segment, states the district acknowledged its web filtering system exists but conceded it does not reliably work. This case is notable for documenting an explicit, demonstrated failure of institutional response even after a parent proved the vulnerability directly to school leadership.
View sourceParents of a 12-year-old reported in May 2026 that the child's online tutor exposed his bare lower body during a session, and police obtained a recording of it, according to the New Castle County Police Department. The tutor, a contractor with the platform since 2014, was charged with indecent exposure and sexual abuse of a child by a person of trust. The platform suspended him and gave police further recordings allegedly showing similar behaviour with other students.
View sourceA female high school senior in Pennsylvania struggled to concentrate and experienced falling grades due to sustained, daily use of school-issued laptops since kindergarten. She found it difficult to focus when learning from screens, leading her to secretly watch streaming services during class. Although her mother requested that the school district confiscate the laptop, the district refused because the devices are integrated into the curriculum.
View sourceResearchers proposed recording preschool classrooms to train AI systems. Parent objections regarding monitoring and consent resulted in cancellation of the project.
View sourceA remote contractor located in Texas, USA, received their platform earnings on a digital payment platform but was blocked from withdrawing or utilizing the funds in any way. The contractor was left unable to access their earned money and sought help from other users online to resolve the issue.
View sourceSchool officials implemented an AI tool to scan students' school-issued accounts, documents, emails, and chats for concerning language. Students filed a lawsuit alleging that the constant automated monitoring created an environment of continuous surveillance and chilled their personal expression.
View sourceSchool officials in a Pennsylvania school district utilized remote activation software on school-issued laptops to covertly capture images of students inside their homes. This surveillance violated the students' privacy rights, leading to legal action and a subsequent financial settlement.
View sourceA group of teenage girls as young as 14 in New Mexico were targeted on Snapchat by a high school coach. The coach utilized the platform's communication features to extort and coerce the girls into sending sexual videos of themselves.
View sourceEach 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.
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.
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.
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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