Gizmodo’s tests find the College Board website shares GPAs, SAT scores, and other information with Facebook and TikTok via tracking pixels. The College Board has a years-long history of sharing and selling student data.

  • Bri Guy @sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    Ah great another fucking scummy organization that preys off people’s data for money

  • crazyman@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Something important to note is that this is being shared through Facebook’s Pixel service.

    Pixel is similar to Google Analytics, but Facebook is also more aggressive in forcing companies to use Pixel, and what’s even worse is that any data shared with Pixel can be made available to other companies very quickly and easily.

    From a marketing standpoint it’s brilliant because it gives you the chance to see what other websites you may share audiences with and how to convert some of that.

    From a privacy standpoint it’s a nightmare, and the fact that the data you’re entering onto a website is tracked by it and accessible is a huge problem that needs to (but won’t) be addressed. I really wish that there wasn’t such a large population of people who have just latched onto Facebook because they are a plague to privacy.

    Source: Worked as a web developer for a marketing company for 2 years and had to do a lot of Facebook integrations.

  • cdf12345@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    So this is only passing the SAT score that a person uses in their searches? Not what they actually scored on their test?

    Like if I search for colleges that take 1550 score that will get passed to Facebook, not my real score?

    • jvisick@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      “If a student uses the college search tool on CB.org, the student can add a GPA and SAT score range to the search filters. Those values are passed [to Facebook]”

      So they don’t associate your official score to your browser, but presumably students who are using that search tool would be searching their real score - or a range close to it.

      The headline is fairly leading, but the statement from the College Board is also fairly misleading. They’re not directly selling your official score to advertisers, but they’re indirectly selling data about you that gives a pretty good idea of your score.

    • tal@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It sounds like it’s just trusting whatever people plonk in in searches, so you can presumably poison their database with whatever GPA and SAT score you want.