Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The College Board website shares GPAs, SAT scores with TikTok and Facebook

gizmodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 101 posts

Re: The College Board website shares GPAs, SAT scores with TikTok and Facebook

#21

Post by chiefalchemist »

paxys wrote: post #9
chiefalchemist wrote: post #3

And...Such data on the open market is also available to the government, without an sort of court approval. Your phone meta data, your SAT scores, your honesty about those scores, etc. etc. As long as Big Gov is buying this abuse will continue. Sure there will be staged events by Congress, etc. but it's not going to change.

Big government already has a hundred ways of getting your SAT score, for example from the admissions department of any public university in the country. It's everyone else you should be worried about. A potential employer, landlord or bank pulling your teenage SAT score without your consent and judging you based on it is a scary but very real prospect.

Yes Big Gov does. And all those ways are 100% legal because it can buy the data on the legal market. There's a legal market for your personal info because...first and foremost it makes Big Gov's job 1000x easier *and* 100% legal. The point is simple. Big Gov has no interest in plugging this hole (i.e., protecting your privacy and personal info) because Big Gov is the Number 1 beneficiary of that hole.

The worry of everyone else is an off-shoot of Big Gov's needs, not the other way around. We can worry about the symptoms or we can worry about the root problem. I favor the latter.

Re: The College Board website shares GPAs, SAT scores with TikTok and Facebook

#22

Post by mistrial9 »

gaulish wrote: post #14
asu_thomas wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be comical if it weren't so dystopian Dystopian? It's literally just plain capitalism in regular reality. Why insist it's something imaginary?

What makes a spokesperson lying “capitalism?” One can think of lying spokespersons like good ol’ Baghdad Bob operating outside of a business context.

.. the person responding merged the thoughts ("the company spokesperson said A" + "screenshots show company doing B" ) + (the reason the company did that is $SYSTEM + the reason the spokesporson said that is $SYSTEM)

this is actually a known problem in cognitive psych; the person writing did not sufficiently break up the parts. An incomplete thought chain or lazy thinking results in this kind of merged result all the time.

Buddhist psychology for one, has a lot to say about the nature of this kind of lack of clarity in general.

Re: The College Board website shares GPAs, SAT scores with TikTok and Facebook

#24

Post by junaru »

dgrin91 wrote: post #16

This seems like mostly clickbait? They don't actually share your scores, they share your search history? If you score a 2400 but search for colleges that accept 1600 then fb gets the 1600 number, not your real number of 2400. I would rather fb get nothing, but as far as data sharing and ad tracking goes, this seems fairly standard. The only surprising part of this story is that they managed to find a stupid pr person…

Not 'mostly' its pure clickbait.

> only surprising part of this story is that they managed to find a stupid pr person who gave a bad quote

They did not do anything wrong and they don't do what the article implies. The response is 100% correct and when confronted with 'what about this' they explained it like the non issue it is.

Its HTTP GET parameters. Not for specific user but for filter range, that's it.

The article is prime example why people don't trust the news.

Re: The College Board website shares GPAs, SAT scores with TikTok and Facebook

#26

Post by asu_thomas »

thfuran wrote: post #15
asu_thomas wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be comical if it weren't so dystopian Dystopian? It's literally just plain capitalism in regular reality. Why insist it's something imaginary?

Why insist that everything is fine while the house burns down around you?

Who said anything is fine? It's both more evocative and more effective to recognize reality as reality than to insist that it's fantasy.

Re: The College Board website shares GPAs, SAT scores with TikTok and Facebook

#27

Post by tb_technical »

SKarasu wrote: post #8

Just how deeply profiled are we? I'm genuinely curious about what big corpo categorizes me as. How well do they know me? What do they care about? What are the most crucial points that I should keep private? It really makes one wonder...

If you're interested, look into one of their most effective and popular tools, Clear (by Reuters). For a large sum of money, you can scrape the most comprehensive database on people in the western world. It will give the buyer information on what you look like, when you were born (and whether or not you're dead), what banks you have accounts with, how many cars you own, where you live, what property you own, who you're married to, who your children are (where they live, if they're old enough and you run clears on them), social media accounts, and other info.

But it's not the US government and Five Eyes spying on you - it's a private corporation... What no one mentions is that these countries have very lucrative contracts with Reuters to maintain this database for their use.

The police also use it to find information on you if they feel they need to really get into your business. And companies use it to check that you're the "right fit" before hiring you. Banks use it before giving out loans to make sure you are who you say you are... I've even heard stories of some landlords using it to make sure their tenants are the "right kind of person".

If you want more info on tools like these, and how to thwart them, look up "The Privacy, Security, & OSINT Show" by Michael Bazzell.

Re: The College Board website shares GPAs, SAT scores with TikTok and Facebook

#28

Post by asu_thomas »

mistrial9 wrote: post #22
gaulish wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes a spokesperson lying “capitalism?” One can think of lying spokespersons like good ol’ Baghdad Bob operating outside of a business context.

.. the person responding merged the thoughts ("the company spokesperson said A" + "screenshots show company doing B" ) + (the reason the company did that is $SYSTEM + the reason the spokesporson said that is $SYSTEM) this is actually a known problem in cognitive psych; the person writing did not sufficiently break up the parts. An incomplete thought chain or lazy thinking results in this kind of merged result all the…

Nobody ascribed a cause to anything. My only point is that it's reality, not imagination.

People just making shit up is also a known problem in cognitive psychology. Very interesting stuff.

Re: The College Board website shares GPAs, SAT scores with TikTok and Facebook

#29

Post by lolinder »

excalibur wrote: post #12
Atreiden wrote: post #7

> “We do not share SAT scores or GPAs with Facebook or TikTok, and any other third parties using pixel or cookies,” said a College Board spokesperson. “In fact, we do not send any personally identifiable information (PII) through our pixels on the site. In addition, we do not use SAT scores or GPAs for any targeting.” > After receiving this comment, Gizmodo shared a screenshot of the College Board sending GPAs and SA…

Article is clickbait/ragebait. They're not sending your scores. If you do a search for colleges who accept scores in a certain range, your search parameters are tracked, just like any other search parameters.

To be fair to Gizmodo, most people won't search for colleges using ranges that don't match their actual or expected scores.

It's like a search for "pregnancy symptoms" on Google—sure it doesn't specifically tell Google that you or someone close to you is pregnant, but you'll start seeing ads for baby stuff anyway because odds are you are.

Re: The College Board website shares GPAs, SAT scores with TikTok and Facebook

#30

Post by pavel_lishin »

dgrin91 wrote: post #16

This seems like mostly clickbait? They don't actually share your scores, they share your search history? If you score a 2400 but search for colleges that accept 1600 then fb gets the 1600 number, not your real number of 2400. I would rather fb get nothing, but as far as data sharing and ad tracking goes, this seems fairly standard. The only surprising part of this story is that they managed to find a stupid pr person…

> If you score a 2400 but search for colleges that accept 1600

But most people won't be doing that. For most people, it'll send their actual scores most of the time.

Saying that "they don't send your actual score" is the kind of sophistry that's technically correct but also wildly inaccurate in actual cases.

Post reply on HN