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Over the next few days and weeks, as time permits, I'll share some additional thoughts and details from the research that shows how the College Board shares student data, in ways that potentially violate their own policies.
The detailed writeup is here: https://medium.com/cr-digital-lab/student-tracking-and-the-college-board-512a94d60ec3
The detailed writeup is here: https://medium.com/cr-digital-lab/student-tracking-and-the-college-board-512a94d60ec3
The College Board site loads a javascript file when a person visits the site. This is not atypical on the internet, but the events defined in this file are interesting. An archived version of this file, from our testing on July 28th, is here: https://gist.github.com/billfitzgerald/ed45bc777b78fad5f9f18100f0c14e87
This file contains events that appear to be set and controlled by the College Board, and include information about cash transactions.
The event defined below appears to send information to Snapchat when a student buys a Subject Test.
The event defined below appears to send information to Snapchat when a student buys a Subject Test.
This event appears to send information to Google when a student spends money to register for the SAT.
This event appears to note and share when a student uses a fee waiver to register for a test. The ability to use a fee waiver is tied to sensitive financial information, such as participation in a free/reduced lunch or the family receiving public assistance.
To be very clear, our testing did not send any money to the College Board, nor did we register for a test using a fee waiver, so we did not observe the specific calls that would be triggered by these events.
But there are a range of additional details like this that we saw in our work that didn't make it into the final piece.
As time permits, and/or as we continue chasing down loose ends, we'll share WIP.
As time permits, and/or as we continue chasing down loose ends, we'll share WIP.
And, be sure to read @thomasgermain 's article on this. It gives a great overview of the salient details, and provides some valuable context. https://www.consumerreports.org/colleges-universities/college-board-is-sharing-student-data-once-again/
