"Everyone turned them in — did you?": at a Yekaterinburg school, students were required to provide their parents' personal data

      In Yekaterinburg, pupils of Gymnasium No. 176 were handed huge forms for parents to fill out. The form required detailed information about the child’s health, their passport data, the adults’ places of work, family composition, registration and residential address.

      The authors of the questionnaire say the data is needed “for the purposes of student safety and in connection with the increased number of terrorist attacks on the territory of the Russian Federation.”

      The father of a 5th‑grade “A” class pupil, Mikhail, refused to provide the school with personal data about himself and his child, since the questionnaire did not state what the gymnasium would do with this information and where it would end up.

      “They handed out forms that were mandatory to fill out; the teacher has been pressuring my son for a week because he didn’t bring the questionnaire. She kept saying, ‘everyone has turned theirs in, but you haven’t,’ ‘your parents are the only ones who can’t submit.’ I believe it is dangerous to provide this information. Scammers could take advantage of it; with this data they could craft phishing emails on behalf of an employer,” the Yekaterinburg resident told the E1.RU portal.

      He was particularly unsettled by the requirement to provide passport details.

      The Yekaterinburg resident appealed to the Department of Education, the police, the prosecutor’s office and Roskomnadzor to have the agencies check the legality of collecting personal data.

      The press service of the Yekaterinburg administration said that information about the children and their parents is not being transferred anywhere.

      “All information is provided to the educational institution at the time of the child’s enrollment. But at the initiative of the director the institution may update the information; the school bears full responsibility for the security of its students’ personal data,” the city administration said.

      Earlier we reported that residents of Solnechny had complained about schools being several times over capacity.