This article is part of a series spotlighting the initial recipients of the Common Sense Privacy Seal (CSP). These articles describe how these companies are investing in privacy, the rigorous standards products must meet to earn the CSP seal and what earning the seal means for their customers.
“AI is a powerful tool for educators and students. We want to ensure that fear and uncertainty don’t stand in the way of adopting this powerful technology,” said Adeel Khan, MagicSchool CEO. “The Common Sense Privacy Seal gives educators, parents and students confidence that MagicSchool is a brand they can trust.”
Adeel Khan, Founder and CEO of MagicSchool
Overview
MagicSchool is one of the fastest growing educational companies in the world. Its AI platform has over 5 million users across 160 countries. With overcrowded classrooms, teachers are experiencing burnout and students with varying levels of proficiency are forced to experience a one size fits all education. AI has the potential to address these issues and so much more. And yet, there is understandably a lot of fear and uncertainty around AI, the data it gathers and how that data can be misused.
MagicSchool made the decision to treat privacy and security as core design principles from the very beginning to protect its users. “For MagicSchool, security and privacy are not just about legal compliance but a foundation for maintaining the trust that educators, parents, and schools place in our platform. They are crucial to our company’s growth and credibility,” said Adeel Khan, MagicSchool CEO.
Given MagicSchool’s focus on privacy and security, the company partnered with Common Sense Privacy to help them identify and implement privacy best practices and provide third party validation.
The Common Sense Privacy Seal Program
As a part of the Common Sense Privacy Seal Program, MagicSchool used the Common Sense platform to guide them through an online 200+ point rubric that assesses their privacy practices around consumers' top data concerns. The rubric is mapped to current regulations and helps companies identify privacy practices that apply to their business. The Common Sense Dashboard identifies potential gaps to relevant laws, provides actionable feedback and helps companies stay current as new laws are introduced.
MagicSchool was already doing a lot to preserve the privacy of their users, but there were opportunities to formally strengthen their privacy stance even more. In particular, Common Sense worked with MagicSchool to enhance commitments in their privacy policies to not track users across the web, not create personalized ads inside the product and only collect the data needed to run the product. This explicit documentation of privacy preserving practices both increased transparency for parents and educators and formalized the company's ongoing commitment to these practices. After working with Common Sense, MagicSchool updated privacy policies earned a verified score of 93% and the Common Sense Privacy Seal.
Educators and consumers can be confident that Privacy Seal recipients like MagicSchool have gone through Common Sense’s most rigorous rating process. The company has completed a full analysis leveraging our 200+ rubric and participated in a formal review with a CSP analyst. They also can rest assured that Common Sense Privacy is monitoring the company’s privacy policies on a quarterly basis to ensure that evaluations stay up to date.
Most importantly, they know that these companies are embracing these 7 best practice privacy principles:
- Personal information is not sold or rented to third parties.
- Personal information is not shared for third-party marketing.
- Personalized advertising is not displayed in the product.
- Third-parties are not permitted to collect data or use it for their own purposes.
- User's information is not used to track and target advertisements on other third-party websites or services.
- Data profiles are not created to use for personalized advertisements.
“We are pleased to award MagicSchool the Common Sense Privacy Seal”, said Daphne Li, CEO Common Sense Privacy. “Common Sense is an advocate for the privacy practices consumers care most about. MagicSchool has demonstrated they are going beyond compliance to leadership in privacy preserving practices.”
Looking Ahead: Maintaining Trust and Scaling Innovation
Privacy is never a “one and done” process. MagicSchool will use the Common Sense Privacy platform to regularly monitor their own privacy practices, product updates and new privacy laws to ensure their continued leadership in privacy best practices. With new laws coming into effect every few months, Common Sense will make it easy and affordable to stay on top of an evolving regulatory landscape and maintain customer trust.
