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

gizmodo.com

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

#82
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…

> 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?

It's funny to try to accuse someone else of living in fantasy while pushing a fantastical notion of what capitalism is.

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

#83
“Those values are passed in the pixel, not because we configured the pixel that way but because that’s how the pixel works”

I’m going to try this logic at the next sprint demo. “I didn’t code it this way, it’s just how it works…”

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

#84
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they didn't, they responded to the question they thought they were being asked. The form fields on their college search page weren't even in their working memory at the time. This is a case of the College Board negligently failing to recognize these fields as sensitive data, not a case of them outright lying. Still bad, obviously, but stupid rather than nefarious.

So if they are this stupid, why are they trusted to administer these tests?

I think they shouldn't be, but that's a separate question from whether this spokesperson lied.

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

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ev…

What do you define "Big Gov" as for this discussion? Just federal, or also state, city, county...? (I'm assuming we're talking about the US, since the context of this discussion is the College Board) What activities is government monitoring using commercially-available data?

re: "What activities is government monitoring using commercially-available data? "

Exactly the point. We have no idea. No fucking clue.

And making that point gets down-voted? It's nice to know HN has so many Big Gov "influencers".

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

#87
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah and then still claim that it can't be traced to the person, where the whole point of the pixel is to lead it back to their fb profile. The spokesperson is either being fed false information or blatantly lying. At least someone in the organization is.

Now imagine this being used by employers to weed out candidates. Or advertisers, to target the "least intelligent" with their campaigns. (Which I'm sure they already do by proxy.)

While employers can't generally request SAT scores from the College Board, they can already request candidates to provide them if they want to.

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

#88
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…

There is absolutely no reason for a public org to send this data to FB or Tiktok. Even if in your opinion "it's just search". There are 2 reasons they are doing that, they actually think it's valuable data for tracking, analytics & finding similar profiles on sociale media; and that makes the concern valid. Or they just didn't think about it, and send over as much data as possible

Its not a public org though. - its non-profit. I'm not a fan of sharing search data either, but I think its unfair to put extra shame on College Board.

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

#89
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah and then still claim that it can't be traced to the person, where the whole point of the pixel is to lead it back to their fb profile. The spokesperson is either being fed false information or blatantly lying. At least someone in the organization is.

Now imagine this being used by employers to weed out candidates. Or advertisers, to target the "least intelligent" with their campaigns. (Which I'm sure they already do by proxy.)

Already seems to be happening but much more upfront. In recent months, I've had two potential employers require I take a "personality" test but only about a quarter of the questions were personality/character attribute based, the rest were clearly intelligence questions, mostly recognizing patterns and testing memory. Tech companies have been pushing the limits of the "directly related to the job" exemption allowed by the Duke Power v Griggs decision for years. Looks like some are ready to simply ignore that court ruling entirely.

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

#90
post #24
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 articl…

It isn't clickbait at all. It's a serious issue.

Your interactions with the site are visible through these third parties. The college crows that they're don't provide PII, but the whole point of tracking pixels is that those services already know precisely who you are. Facebook, Tiktok, et al have tracking pixels precisely because it allows them to farm more information to fill out the profile of a user.

Only the technically ignorant or dystopian don't see a profound issue with this.

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