Children's information being published on the internet

[HoveDad]

On Thursday I searched for my Daughter?s name in Google and was sickened when a letter from her school which includes her name, year group and class as well as the school?s name and address showed up. This is being published by Uniservity (uniservity.com/) who provide website software to schools.
It took about 3 hours to persuade them to remove the document (the school didn't know how).
Having dealt with my immediate problem I asked them what they were going to do about the 1.3 million other documents that were searchable due to the same issue and was told that this was a training issue for the LEAs and schools to resolve, when I suggested they contact the schools to warn them they refused.
This means that many children, some on the at rick register, can be located simply by putting their name into google.
If you want to check if your child is affected then put:
"www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupDownloadFile.asp?" "CHILDS NAME"
into google and see what comes up.
To see how bad the problem is put
"www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupDownloadFile.asp?" smith
On Thursday when I first reported the issue that search gave 34,000 results, it now gives 14,000 but that doesn't necessarily mean anything has been done.
As a web developer I can say with authority that this is incredibly sloppy and unnecessary.

That is very concerning.

I've checked and my DCs schools aren't on the alpha list but I saw a couple of local schools (private rather than state) but I can't see any of the content without a password.

Do you need to put the quotes round the childs name to check fully ?

This is shocking!

What about children who are suppose to be in hiding from family or something like that! They will be easy to find.

I haven't looked as my children aren't school age but I am getting so pissed off with so many bloody details being available at the press of a button on the net!

Yes, you'll probably need to put quotes around.
Your kids will only show up if your school uses this software and have put up letters home with their names in, but based on
"www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupDownloadFile.asp?" smith
returning 34,000 results on Thursday quite a few schools have.

For me searching for "firstname surname" without anything else showed my daughter, that's what really worried me.

Information Commissioner's Office I think!

I've already emailed them but haven't heard back yet. Anyone else affected should contact them at '[email protected]' as well as calling their school.

mistakes happen, fair do's

but these two bits of info concerned me more than anything:

1. It took about 3 hours to persuade them to remove the document

2. the school didn't know how

The things that wound me up is that

1. They could use a robots.txt file to stop google indexing any of this content.
2. They refused to admit that this was a serious issue and do anything about the wider problem, this is affecting tens or hundreds of thousands of children.

Well, I've tried various combinations of spaces and quotes with smith and can't get anything other than the home page.

I assume you are deliberately not posting the address as a link, do you mind telling me exactly what I should type in.

Thanks

Follow this link and it'll take you to the search results I'm talking about:
www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22www.school-portal.co.uk%2FGroupDownloadFile.asp%3F%22+smith

/goes to google childrens names now

link

Uniservity has a history of being unsafe - if you read this Blog you can see for yourself.

moodlea.blogspot.com/2010/02/troubles-for-studywiz-acid-test-for-lp.html

My daughter's school uses it and Im always checking that she is safe - as far as I can. I don't really understand all the tecnicalities but Im not the only one to be so concerned.

I raised my concerns with the school but they just fobbed be off.

Im very worried that our children are in danger because uniservity is so shoddy.

Hovedad seems to know what he is talking about, so if he is worried Im twice as concerned. How can uniservity get away with it?????????