In an official blog entry posted on Wednesday, Google has denied allegations by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) that the search giant is invading the privacy of some students through its laptop educational software.

The director of Google Apps for Education Jonathan Rochelle posted a message saying "While we appreciate the EFF's focus on student data privacy, we are confident that our tools comply with both the law and our promises."

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a complaint against Google and asks the Federal Trade Commission to probe the tech giant for violating its own privacy commitments. The EFF complaint states that Google for Education collects and shares personal student data. The EFF added that this practice violates the Student Privacy Pledge, an agreement which Google signed in January.

Google said that allegations about breaking the Student Privacy Pledge is coming from its rival company, Apple.

In this debate, Google has found some important ally. The group behind the Student Privacy Pledge sided with Google citing that the EFF complaint includes "important misunderstandings" regarding the pledge. A D.C. think tank and fellow signatory of the Student Privacy Pledge also sided with Google regarding the issue.

According to Re/Code, the EFF complaint hinges on two of Google's practices.

First, the EFF claims that Google collects data in order to improve its services, instead of purely providing educational services. Even before the Pledge was signed, Google has already stopped scanning students' accounts for advertising purposes but the EFF argues that the company still serves ads on non-educational services. This happens when students access non-educational Google services while they are still logged into their school accounts.

The second complaint claims that Google automatically enables the Chrome Sync service on Chromebook laptops used by students. This allows the device to store detailed user browsing information by default. Students have the option to turn off Chrome Sync. However, school administrations have the authority to override these settings by using Google's system management tools, according to The Verge.

TagsGoogle privacy, Google Security, Online privacy, online security, hacking, hackers, Google+ feature, Google Student Privacy Pledge, Privacy Pledge, Student Privacy Pledge