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.
Freelance Data Annotators in the Philippines Suffer Withheld and Reduced Payments
A group of 34 freelance data annotators in the Philippines reported experiencing delayed, reduced, or cancelled payments after completing tasks on an artificial intelligence data annotation platform. The platform's operators routinely withheld or delayed earnings without explanation or recourse, leaving many of these workers earning well below the daily minimum wage.
Freelance graphic designer unable to withdraw earnings from payment platform for six months
In 2023, a female freelance graphic designer based in Imo State, Nigeria, was unable to access her freelance earnings after her account on a digital payment platform was locked. The platform prevented her from withdrawing her funds for six months, causing her severe financial strain during her national youth service.
Freelance Worker Underpaid on Data Annotation Platform
A 23-year-old female freelance worker was paid only 30 cents for completing four hours of work on an online data annotation platform. She experienced earnings far below the local minimum wage due to the platform's payment practices.
Freelancer account banned after completing job later identified as academic assignment
Worker P7 completed a job that turned out to be a university assignment (he was not aware of it when doing the assignment) and lost USD 45 after being banned for completing a banned type of task.
Freelancer Experiences Low Financial Returns and High Bidding Costs on Freelancing Platform
A virtual assistant based in the Philippines spent ₱800 on a freelancing platform's bidding system and applied to 40 jobs over the course of a month. After securing only one $200 project and paying the platform's commission fees, they netted only $160, resulting in a low financial return for a month of aggressive bidding.
Freelancer refused payment for 2024 project invoices, later helped to relink payout account
A freelancer says the project team delayed updating invoices on a project last year, and that after the platform moved to a new system it refused to pay their pending invoice and told them to fix their payout account. They say that is done and they need a link to reattach it. The platform replied on 25 April that someone would reach out, and on 28 April the complainant said it had helped them link the account and promised payment by 30 April.
A freelancer who worked for the platform for several months says their account was abruptly suspended and that they were not paid for the final project they completed. They ask for payment for the work done before the suspension and an explanation of the suspension. The amount is not stated. BBB lists the complaint as Unanswered by the business.
Freelancer told they would not be paid for a 2024 project after invoice delays
A freelancer says the project team delayed updating the invoice section on a project last year, so they could not submit their invoice, and that they were later told they would not be paid and should fix their payout account. They say the payout account problem is solved and they need access to reconnect it and submit the invoice. The platform replied on 25 April that someone would reach out, and BBB lists the complaint as Resolved after the complainant said that response was satisfactory.
Freelancer unpaid six weeks after November work, emails ignored
A freelancer says they worked on 8 November with payment due the following week, and about six weeks later their emails are ignored and no payment has been made. The amount is not stated. BBB lists the complaint as Unanswered by the business.
Freelancer’s 28 completed tasks unpaid for over a month
A freelancer working since 2020 says 28 tasks have gone unpaid for over a month and that the assigned quality managers do not respond. They describe the work as their only income. The amount is not stated. BBB lists the complaint as Unanswered by the business.
Freelancer’s Account Restricted and Funds Frozen Following International Payment
A Nigerian data analyst had her account restricted after receiving a payment of $380 from an international client. Despite completing all required documentation, the payment platform placed a multi-week hold on her funds, preventing her from accessing her earnings. The restriction occurred shortly after she linked her local digital wallet to the international payment service.
Freelancer’s account shut down with platform threatening to hold earnings
A self-employed worker whose client uses the platform says the platform shut down their account with no specific reason and threatened to hold the money they had earned. They ask for the funds to be released and for an explanation, and say it is their main source of income. BBB lists the complaint as Unanswered by the business.
Freelancer’s client payment of 2,200 euros frozen for 180 days
An 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.
Freelancer’s earnings held for six months by payment platform
A graphic designer who earns through freelancing says a payment platform held his money for 180 days. He says he almost lost all his freelancing earnings and felt mentally drained. He then moved to a different payment platform.
Freelancer’s client payment held for over two weeks, support silent
An adult male freelancer reports that a payment platform has held funds from a client’s transfer for more than 15 days. He states that he supplied an invoice, a work agreement, and proof of transfer, was then asked for documents regarding an account he does not own, and support stopped responding. The money remains unavailable.
Freelancer’s earned funds blocked by six-week verification freeze
A reviewer says her business verification questionnaire has sat under review for 6 weeks. She says the account is blocked from receiving payments, which holds both the funds she earned before issuing a payment request and later earnings. Support gave conflicting template replies and she filed an escalation complaint.
FTC order against Edmodo over children’s data collected for advertising and kept indefinitely; company had suspended US operations
According 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.
Funds locked about 60 days after move from task work to trainer role
A data worker upgraded to a trainer role had funds locked for about 60 days until an appeal about the source of the higher income than usual succeeded.
Source: Data Labelers Association
Date source link verified: 22/10/2026
Technology in Education
GermanyNews article
Germany – awareness campaign after child-pornography-related content on student phones
In 2021, the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office (BLKA) launched a statewide prevention campaign addressing illegal and harmful content on students' smartphones. Officials stated that pornography, violence videos, and other problematic content were being encountered and shared by children and adolescents online and in student chat groups. The campaign was developed in response to police observations and increasing criminal cases involving the distribution of pornography, which Bavarian police reported had risen substantially in 2020. The source does not describe a single documented school incident, specific device-filtering failure, or identified school, but constitutes an official law-enforcement statement that the circulation of pornographic material on student smartphones and within youth communication channels was a recurring issue requiring preventive intervention.
Ghana – Education Minister public warning on tablet porn access
Ghana's Minister for Education publicly expressed serious concern that some high school students are using government-issued tablets to access pornographic content. This is an official government statement rather than a single documented incident, and represents formal acknowledgment at the ministerial level of a pattern the ministry considers significant enough to raise publicly. No details on the scale, specific schools, or planned remediation are given in available coverage.
Government school teacher arrested for allegedly showing obscene video on classroom screen to middle school female students
A teacher at a government middle school was arrested for allegedly showing an obscene video on a classroom screen and making vulgar gestures to female students (aged approximately 11-12 years old). The arrest followed a complaint by the father of one of the students, and a case was registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and the IPC.
Government-issued tablets for primary school pupils were left in storage because schools struggled to use them
In 2013, the Kenyan government launched an ambitious initiative to provide digital devices to young primary school students as part of a national digital literacy effort. However, the program faced major implementation challenges, including inadequate infrastructure, limited access to electricity, insufficient teacher training, lack of technical support, and schools unprepared to integrate the devices into learning. Reports indicated that some devices remained unused or stored away, and the project was ultimately discontinued after failing to achieve its intended impact.
Graphic Designer Faces Low Wages and High Commissions on Freelancing Platform
A graphic designer based in the Philippines experienced low earnings on a freelancing platform due to the platform's flat 20% commission fee and client demands for unlimited revisions. For a $50 logo design, the designer netted only $40 and was forced to perform extensive revisions, resulting in compensation below the minimum wage.
Held payouts met only by automated support replies
Workers seeking help for held payouts received only automated replies.
Source: Data Labelers Association
Date source link verified: 22/10/2026
Technology in Education
United StatesNews article
High school employee’s personal laptop projects explicit images to class via classroom projector
During 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.
High school teacher suspended for not using electronic register when school supplied no device; court annuls sanction
In March 2015, a head teacher at a high school in the Apulia region of Italy found that a female teacher was keeping a paper register because the school had not provided teachers with electronic devices, and suspended her for one day. The teacher appealed with a lawyer from a teachers' union. On 16 February 2018, a local labor court annulled the sanction, finding no proof that the teacher had a device to fill in the register, and noted that teachers received tablets only after the disciplinary charge.
IAS coaching applicant paid fees to ed-tech firm after online advertisement, received no coaching or refund; consumer commission orders repayment
An adult female applicant paid IAS coaching fees after seeing an online advertisement, but received no coaching and no refund. A consumer commission ordered repayment and compensation.
Illinois, US – Pornography Accessed on School-Issued Tablets
Students 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.
India – Students using government educational platforms were denied meaningful ability to opt out of surveillance
Some Indian state education ministries set quotas for government teachers to get a minimum number of students to download Diksha, the national education app; a Times of India report cited by HRW says Uttar Pradesh told each government teacher to convince 10 students to download it. 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.
Indian student compelled to use educational application that collected precise location data
The Indian Education Ministry's Diksha app, the government's main means of delivering online education during the pandemic and downloaded by over 10 million students and teachers, was found by HRW to collect children's precise location, including current and last known location. The app gave Google access to location data through two embedded SDKs and was observed sending children's advertising IDs to Google. Its privacy policy does not disclose the location collection and describes only approximate, IP-based location. Some state education ministries set quotas for government teachers to get a minimum number of students to download it. HRW said children and their parents were denied the chance to decide whether to allow the government to track their location and share it with third-party companies.
Indiana, United States – first-grader accessed inappropriate content on school iPad
A 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.
Intruders broadcast obscene and violent images into a middle school’s online English lesson in Italy
In March 2020, intruders entered a teacher's online English lesson at a middle school in Italy and sent pupils obscene and violent images; the students disconnected, visibly upset. Class representatives reported it to the head teacher and the postal police, and a class representative criticised access by a simple link with no authentication. Parents asked the head to inform all families of the security standards the school had adopted for distance learning, and the source says the Ministry and the regional school office were looking into the case. Families first raised it. Responses acted on the school and the persons responsible (police complaint, still an allegation). Whether access settings were changed 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.
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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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