This week’s UK nursery data breach should be a wake-up call. Hackers targeted the Kido nursery chain, stealing sensitive records on over 8,000 children and families — names, addresses, photos, even safeguarding notes. Some of this data has already appeared online. (Reuters)
At the very same time, the government is pushing digital IDs for children under the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. Touted as a ‘Single Unique Identifier’, these systems will track education, healthcare, behaviour, and attendance from nursery age onward — creating a permanent digital footprint a child cannot escape.
Providers already feel the pressure: nurseries must now log every absence, even if a toddler leaves early for a birthday party. With funding tied to surveillance, it’s not hard to imagine parents soon being fined for taking their two-year-olds out of nursery.
Children cannot consent to lifelong data trails. Yet once these systems are in place, the risk of misuse, leaks, and profiling is unavoidable — as the Kido hack just proved.
If privacy is to mean anything, it must start with protecting children. Accepting digital IDs (no matter how they’re dressed up) for them today means accepting surveillance for all of us tomorrow.
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