The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Tuesday to investigate Google’s education service, alleging that it violates the company’s pledge to restrict its use of student data. EFF says that bringing Google Chromebooks in classrooms as well as the fact that each student should create a profile in Google Apps for Education, Google’s cloud-based education suite, might come at the cost of students' privacy.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is a federal law that protects students’ "educational records," including personally identifiable information. The data that students often use to log into a Chromebook or Google Apps for Education—like name, student number, and birthday - is covered by FERPA. Under FERPA, this data generally can’t be shared with third parties - including Google - without written parental consent.

In addition, EFF says that when schools issue Chromebooks, Google’s browser Chrome comes with Chrome Sync turned on by default. So instead of storing sensitive data - like browsing history - locally on the device, Chrome syncs that data to the cloud and allows Google to collect and indefinitely store sensitive data about students’ use of Chrome to browse the Web.

In an official complaint to the Federal Trade Commission, the EFF that the service known as Google Apps for Education violates a pledge that Google signed in January. The legally binding Student Privacy Pledge, signed by more than 75 other companies including Apple and Microsoft is a vow to collect, store or use student data only for educational purposes.

In response to the EFF’s concerns, Google said it agreed to change the sync settings on Chromebooks sold to schools. Under the new settings, data entered or generated by students while using Google Apps for Education would not be used outside of that context.

However , the EFF said that the altered sync settings didn’t go far enough. Google continues to collect personal information when students are logged into their Google Apps for Education accounts and use non-educational Google services. For instance, Google collects online search terms that logged-in students enter whether or not the searches relate to schoolwork, the EFF said.

The group asked the FTC to require Google to destroy all student data it has collected and used in violation of the Student Privacy Pledge and to prevent the company from collecting such data in the future.