Children being ‘doxxed’ by online tutors, says peak body

School students as young as five are being unintentionally exposed in online marketing by tutoring companies, listing sensitive information that child predators could exploit, prompting complaints to Australia’s peak tutoring body.

The Australian Tutoring Association says it will lodge a complaint with the government’s eSafety Commission, appealing for formalised regulation and guidelines around the industry. 

Mohan Dhall, the ATA chief executive, said some online tutoring testimonials reveal children’s names and locations, putting them at unnecessary risk.

“On social media, there is an issue that has emerged around the use of children, in promotions, and around, particularly, the use of children in school uniform, sometimes even naming the schools they go to, and or revealing a location,” said Dhall. 

“It is our intention that the eSafety Commissioner provides clear guidelines for non-mainstream educational enterprises, that is, private tutoring businesses, and their role in protecting children.

“These are very disconcerting behaviours, and are completely outside of the bounds that you’d expect of an entity or entities that seek to promote child safety.”

The tutoring industry in Australia is worth about $2.2 billion annually to the economy, with 80,000 tutors working across hundreds of private companies, offering educational services to children from two years old and up.

I would have thought the private market would be even quicker to react to protect children better, rather than go in the opposite direction and actively seek children to promote.

Mohan Dhall, ATA chief executive

Researchers Charlotte Costello and Monett Mai, who worked with the ATA to conduct research across social media platforms, said parents were not fully aware of the potential consequences of having their children visible online.

Costello said, among other things, she was able to use AI to immediately identify a student’s school through prompting ChatGPT, and found public timetables indicating when the student attended tutoring.

“I don’t think they (the parents) are really understanding that even if they do consent to putting their child online, that it can actually have really dangerous effects,” Costello said.

While unlikely to be malicious in intent, Dhall described some tutoring companies as “naive to a point of stupidity and recklessness”.

“If you look at the recent research on deep fakes and use of AI to create them, schools themselves, mainstream schools, are now not promoting photos of kids in uniform, on public websites,” he said.

“And if the school system is reacting, I would have thought the private market would be even quicker to react to protect children better, rather than go in the opposite direction and actively seek children to promote.”

While consent may or may not be given by parents to tutoring companies to feature young students, the ATA claimed exposing students on the internet primarily is an eSafety issue.

Dhall added that many of these companies were difficult to contact, hampering efforts to alert or reach out regarding safety concerns.

“It’s tricky to tell, but where someone doesn’t necessarily have a settled website, where they promote on Discord, or on TikTok, or on Facebook only, then it’s hard to find a phone number,” he said. 

“So it’s hard to actually issue anything when the contact details are on forms of social media that are not regular in terms of the normal business accountabilities.”

Warning to schools

Traditionally Australian schools have sought parental consent when using pictures of children in promotional material or on their websites.

However, in July the eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant published a new Online Safety Advisory warning that images of school children appearing in communications put out by primary and secondary schools could be misused for AI generated content.

“eSafety is keeping the pressure on technology companies to put barriers in place to disrupt poor behaviour, but schools can also play an important role in keeping their staff and students safe by taking a risk-based approach to considering which images to post publicly,” Ms Inman Grant said at the time.

With Australia’s recent focus on child safety on social media, Dhall claimed a double standard for child safety is being formed.

“I think you’ve been really, very carefully looking at what’s happening in mainstream education, around photographs, videos, and the use of children’s images in uniforms, that’s been very big this year, and the eSafety Commission has sought to address this issue and it’s impacting schools all over the country,” said Dhall.

“That tutoring businesses do not even know what is completely basic to child protection is the worry.”

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner intends to publish a landmark Children’s Online Privacy Code in December, providing formalised guidelines for organisations to consider children’s privacy.

For many private businesses, the social media algorithm is a lucrative means of outreach to parents worried about their children’s education.

Siddhant Saini, a UNSW software engineering student who offers free consultations through Instagram to parents about the selective school exam but doesn’t offer tutoring, has a dim view of most tutoring services, but sympathises with the need for them to grow their business through social media.

“Social media growth and sharing kids’ work and results ends up being a really good marketing play because nothing sells like proof,” he told Central News.

“What happens in year 12, a kid gets good ATAR, and all of a sudden their time is worth $70 an hour [tutoring].

“Then all of a sudden they’re now teaching the ways that makes sense to them, to another kid, and half the time it’s not really correlated anyways, and it doesn’t really do anything good.”

To Mai, of particular concern are tutors promoting a student’s learning disability as part of their teaching abilities. 

“I believe that’s quite inappropriate to go ahead and out this child,” she said. “This child doesn’t fully understand what they’re even taking videos of them for. Just to show off in a way, they can teach children who face [learning] difficulties?

“This is like a very strong word – child exploitation.”

She further compared it to child beauty pageants that are “using children as a form of media to get money”.

“Why isn’t a line drawn once it’s a tutoring company trying to use their students as a way to promote?” she said. “Even if you get [the] parents’ consent.”

Several tutoring companies were contacted for comment for this article but did not respond.

Main image screenshots from tutoring companies.