College Board Shares Student SAT Scores, GPA with Facebook and TikTok (gizmodo.com) 42
College Board sends student SAT scores and GPA to Facebook and TikTok, according to tests by tech news outlet Gizmodo. Even when searching for colleges, personal academic details are shared with social media companies. From the report: Gizmodo observed the College Board's website sharing data with Facebook and TikTok when a user fills in information about their GPA and SAT scores. When this reporter used the College Board's search filtering tools to find colleges that might accept a student with a C+ grade-point average and a SAT score of 420 out of 1600, the site let the social media companies know. Whether a student is acing their tests or struggling, Facebook and TikTok get the details.
The College Board shares this data via "pixels," invisible tracking technology used to facilitate targeted advertising on platforms such as Facebook and TikTok. The data is shared along with unique user IDs to identify the students, along with other information about how you use the College Board's site. Organizations use pixels and other tools to share data so they can send targeted ads to people who use their apps and websites on other platforms, such as Google, Facebook, and TikTok.
The College Board shares this data via "pixels," invisible tracking technology used to facilitate targeted advertising on platforms such as Facebook and TikTok. The data is shared along with unique user IDs to identify the students, along with other information about how you use the College Board's site. Organizations use pixels and other tools to share data so they can send targeted ads to people who use their apps and websites on other platforms, such as Google, Facebook, and TikTok.
Re: Can we use this? (Score:2)
Stop trying to redefine the word "Pixels" (Score:2, Informative)
"The College Board shares this data via "pixels," invisible tracking technology used to facilitate targeted advertising on platforms such as Facebook and TikTok... Organizations use pixels and other tools to share data so they can send targeted ads to people who use their apps and websites on other platforms, such as Google, Facebook, and TikTok."
That's not what pixels are. Stop trying to redefine words.
Re:Stop trying to redefine the word "Pixels" (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a classic case of modern journalism. A clueless upper middle to upper class wanker, who thinks that rather than understanding the subject, his/her job is to push whatever message needs to be pushed according to ideology of the moment.
That means that actual angle through which the message is pushed and its details are irrelevant, and minimal amount of time is spent attempting to comprehend the angle and its details. Instead they get someone in their inner circle of friends give a quick and dirty explanation. Then they interpret that statement in context of the subject being pushed.
And so you get quotes like this. Where the subject is "social media bad, digital advertising with social media even worse (advertise with us instead)", and then the angle is "they're tracking you and here's how (I have no idea, but I am in a lot of debt learning how to lie convincingly)".
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Unfortunately, I'm out of moderator points, so I can't do "+1 Insightful"
Re:Stop trying to redefine the word "Pixels" (Score:5, Informative)
Usually would not answer an AC, but I saw the answer below.
These are correctly called "tracking-pixels" or "spy-pixels" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spy_pixel) and it is not a redefinition of the word as these are literally 1-pixel graphics that can be made invisible (by transparency 100% in PNG, for example). Originally invented for HTML-Email to see whether somebody opens their message (and then the pixel gets loaded), but uses on web-sites are possible as well.
I do not actually think the "journalist" has any understanding of this tech, but the terminology is not actually completely wrong.
Re:Stop trying to redefine the word "Pixels" (Score:5, Funny)
Technically correct! The best KIND of correct!!!
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Well, I do not care about your entirely valid feelings, so that works out nicely!
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so pixel tracking is a classic, used by Google Analytics and most analytics packages on the web. It's not "hiding" anywhere, transparency doesn't matter, you don't even return any data for the "pixel" the 1x1 gif request just gets a 200 back. The get params and body of the request have all the info that are going to be stored by the server getting the pixel request. Part of the reason this is the case is that it used to be that gif requests had the shortest response times on the web and skipped some steps.
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I did see some of the early experiments back when. The "no data returned" version is already a refinement.
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They don't send your scores (Score:3)
They send information about what search filters you use on their site.
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Regardless....
Just yet another reason NOT to be on Facebook (or TikTok...or any other social media).
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We appreciate that you can't tolerate people and only crawl out from under a rock grudgingly, in order to post on slashdot, which is too primitive to know what a "spy pixel" is.
The problem here is not so much with Metaface as with the College Board gleefully sharing your data without so much as a by-your-leave. I'd suggest rounding them up and sending them to Russia with our compliments.
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Ah...naive one....
Maybe you're too young to remember a time when people had REAL friends...in meatspace.
People that you actually meet up with regularly in real life and spend time in each others physical presence.
These are true friends...that care about you, are interested in you....that your respective families often know and w
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Real friends bring their own shovels.
FERPA Violation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even the college board is not allowed to just share the educational records with anybody. Some of this requires written consent form the partents...
https://nces.ed.gov/pubs97/web/97859.asp
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FERPA doesn't apply to every institution though. I can't say if it applies to the College Board or not, but it's targeted at "public schools and state or local education agencies that receive Federal education funds". It's possible that it still does because the College Board may receive federal education funds, I'm only saying that most people assume FERPA applies everywhere but it doesn't. Especially if a student is willfully giving you the information.
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College Board may receive federal education funds
If they aren't they are missing out on the government handout of millions of lifetimes. (Assuming federal student loans count as "federal education funds" anyway.)
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The page you linked to defines "educational record" for the purposes of the law. Which of those definitions do you think covers search criteria that someone uses when browsing a database of colleges?
(Hint: The answer is "none of them".)
college is a ripoff (Score:2)
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Anyone would be far better off going to a trade school and learning a skilled trade,
I'm not an expert in this field, but I don't see how this statement can be true for anyone ultimately interested in pursuing a PhD, MD, JD, and probably a plethora of other goals.
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You can't even be nurse or teacher without a college degree. Not to mention being a doctor, dentist, lawyer, engineer (electrical/civil/mechanical), or many other professions that society needs and desires.
Re:college is a ripoff (Score:5, Insightful)
as a software person (who is near retiring age), I can tell you that I've been out of work for long-ish periods of time and after a certain age, my salary slope (how fast I was going up) leveled out a lot and my choices were fewer. compare that to blue collar; they are never out of work if they are able to work (that's a big if, I guess). when I have tried calling for electrician or plumber or similar, its often a long wait and the fee is pretty high. these guys WORK for a living, but they are not as unstable as we white collar guys are.
up economy or down economy, you need your sink fixed and your roof fixed. and your car fixed. etc. that never goes away and those people are always working (if they choose to).
finally, it cannot be outsourced. you wont worry about some guy halfway around the world undercutting you. yeah, have some guy from china or india twist and solder that pipe in your house. go ahead and phone it in. telnet to my sink (maybe use ssh, if you can). I'd like to see it.
blue collar is far more stable work and sometimes it can be good income. remember, income is the area under the curve. with gaps, you lose area. software and 'thinking skills' people will have gaps in their income. 'workers' who are even halfway decent are always making income.
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"salary slope (how fast I was going up) leveled out a lot and my choices were fewer."
That happens to everyone, even plumbers. About every professions tops out at some amount for 99% of those involved. That include plumbers, electricians, software developers, teachers, doctors, dentists, waiters, or sanitation workers.
And when people get topped out, they have fewer and fewer choices unless they want to take a sizable drop in income. It can be a plus and minus of getting old.
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To make a good living at many trades you are essentially running your own business - arguably having a good undergraduate business education would support your success doing this.
This is news? (Score:5, Interesting)
Load up Prodigy Math (https://www.prodigygame.com/main-en/prodigy-math/), a platform used by kids and teachers to "teach" math concepts. If you have Privacy Possum, Privacy Badger, DuckDuckGo, or other privacy respecting extensions install, you'll notice a bunch of trackers loaded. If you ask your school board, or school if they track children's data, you'll likely be told: "No", or "No it's a violation of X, Y, Z", etc... but then why are any trackers loading? The board in my area maintains that children are NOT tracked, period! Except all software you load, including Windows and those from Google, are basically celebrations in violation of digital liberty.
I'm confused why this is news, very few people care about their data or digital liberties, and even when you do, you're forced to use products that have the same respect for digital liberties as North Korea has for human dignity.
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This post is also naively assuming client-side trackers. The server could be blabbing everything as well, and the client wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
Fortunately, the bad companies don't trust the webservers to be honest, so they insist on (blockable) client-side tracking instead.
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When it comes to web apps, you are fairly allowed to get the IP I expose to you, and some browser related information which web serve
Re: This is news? (Score:2)
I am not a big supporter of tracking, but it is pretty standard for malicious actors to cloak their identity. I have considered, for example, blocking incoming traffic from Cloudflare. I might put this to the test on a smaller sever to see if there are any unintended consequences. So I can see a legitimate reason for blocking someone who is obviously cloaking their identity.
So simply enter 800 as your score? (Score:1)
This story reads like a conspiracy theory (Score:3)
There is no evidence TikTok or Facebook is mining or monetizing leaked/indirect analytics.
All a user has to do to stop this risk is use a plugin like Disconnect or some ad blockers to remove it.
Perhaps standardized testing, student loans, and universities (tuition) shouldn't be commercial ventures to begin with.
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In the end, the GP is right.
Standardized testing, as implemented in the US, is just a mechanism to allow politicians to have something to gloat over when the scores are high, and someone to punish and blame when the scores are low. I.e. It's a "do something" machine, that has no value outside of the political and commercial spheres. The reason why is simple. Most of those standardized tes
Filter, block, protect. (Score:2)
I run pihole on my home network, run the Duck-Duck Go browser extension, u-block origin, and for some things I only use Tails. Don't trust anyone to isolate what should be islands of information for you. Be proactive and gap that stuff yourself. Make associating your browsing campaigns impossible. Reboot that Tails machine frequently between browsing campaigns. This is as much of a self-discipline measure as it is a technical measure, and will take practice. The payoffs are worth the effort.
Trust no one.
Study (Score:1)