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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: Zambia Clear all

4 results

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

Zambia's Ministry of General Education launched two websites on April 20, 2020, e-Learning Portal (grades 7 to 12) and Smart Revision (exam practice for grades 7, 9 and 12), and required students to pay a monthly subscription fee to access them, although Zambia legally guarantees free basic education. HRW detected e-Learning Portal sending students' personal data to PushEngage, a push notification company, and to Tawk.to, a live chat service, and detected Smart Revision sending students' personal data to Facebook. HRW said submitting to these data practices was an indirect cost levied on students in exchange for their education.

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

Zambia's government charged students a monthly subscription fee to use its two online education websites during Covid-19 school closures. e-Learning Portal charged ZMW 5 (US$0.26) per course, with bundles priced progressively higher by grade, including a 'Subscribe To All At K35 Only' option (US$1.84) for grades 10 to 12 where only three subjects were offered. Smart Revision charged ZMW 10 (US$0.53) a month for grade 7, ZMW 20 (US$1.05) for grade 9 and ZMW 30 (US$1.58) for grade 12. HRW said the fees were a direct cost and a financial barrier to education, on top of the cost of internet access and devices; Zambia ranks 98 out of 120 countries on the cost of internet access relative to income.

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

e-Learning Portal, a Zambian Ministry of General Education website offering core-subject courses for grades 7 to 12 for a fee, was detected by HRW sending its students' personal data to PushEngage, a company that markets push notification services as a way to increase revenue from each visitor, and to Tawk.to, a live chat service whose chat function was neither visible nor available on the site. HRW's table lists it as having no privacy policy. The Zambian government, e-Learning Portal and PushEngage did not respond to HRW, and Tawk.to did not acknowledge the finding.

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

Smart Revision, a Zambian Ministry of General Education website offering practice tests for grades 7, 9 and 12 to prepare for national examinations, was detected by HRW sending students' personal data to Facebook. HRW's table lists it as having no privacy policy. The Zambian government and Smart Revision did not respond to HRW, and Facebook did not acknowledge the finding.

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.