Scottish school social media networking platform, Yammer, has come under further tough criticism after Education Secretary John Swinney admits that the network’s safety, control and monitoring measures are ‘not hugely effective’.

Yammer is a Microsoft discussion and collaboration tool, which cost almost £70 million over the past decade, that was made available in Scottish schools by Glow, Education Scotland’s national digital learning platform.

It allows every school pupil and teacher in Scotland to connect to one another, which means it also allows anyone with access to their home computer to do so too. However, this connectivity has been abused by unscrupulous individuals to share violent gore images and to target young children, offering them drugs and attempting to lure them to ‘sleepovers’.

Education Secretary Knew of Risk & Failed to Act Swiftly

Chief Inspector of Education Gayle Gorman also admitted that there was no effective tool which could be implemented in the Yammer application. According to an expose by The Courier, which ultimately led to the suspension of Yammer in schools, education bosses were aware of the serious monitoring flaws in the system when they signed off on the rollout.

It has emerged that Swinney was aware of other pornographic material circulating on the network in April but failed to take measures to safeguard children from being exposed to graphic content on the network.

This serious security flaw only came to light in June following the discovery of graphic images and comments discussing narcotics on the platform, this content was left accessible to children despite being flagged up by parents.

Scottish Labour’s education spokesman Iain Gray said: “It is simply not acceptable for Ministers to be warned of internet safety failures, choose not to inform parents that they exist and fail to pull the plug on the site.

“John Swinney must explain why he did nothing to close down this unsafe app and why he ignored safety risks to allow children to access Yammer.”

Security Measures Woefully Lacking

According to Gorman, Glow has a keyword monitoring system and profanity filter within Yammer. If any of the blacklisted words are used on the website, either publicly or privately, it will trigger a moderator to check the content.

The email filter will automatically block any content that contains inappropriate language. However, cybersecurity experts have said this simply is not enough to ensure the safety of the users.

Gorman commented on the system: “Unfortunately, the technology is not hugely effective (even companies like Facebook rely mainly on human review and intervention based on reports and complaints).

“Artificial intelligence is evolving rapidly in this area but there is currently no truly effective tool which could be implemented on Glow.”

Yammer to Remain Suspended for Now

Swinney responded to the incident saying: “I was advised of an incident in April where an inappropriate image had been posted on Yammer as part of inappropriate behaviour by pupils.

“At that time I sought and received assurance from the Chief Inspector of Education that immediate action had been taken to remove the image completely from the site and to prevent it being circulated.

“On being advised in June of a separate complaint from a parent relating to a different matter it became clear that there were other issues to address which required Yammer to be suspended. Yammer will remain suspended while a review takes place, moderation is strengthened and until I am satisfied that the appropriate safeguards are in place for all pupils.”

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