Consumer Reports tests The College Board's privacy policy claims...

[ucbalumnus]

… and questions whether they are being fulfilled.

https://www.consumerreports.org/colleges-universities/college-board-is-sharing-student-data-once-again/

@Thomas Germain in Consumer Reports

The College Board’s privacy policy makes explicit claims about sharing user data. The document defines a username as personal information, then goes on to say that “no personally identifiable information is shared” with third parties that perform advertising services, specifically citing Facebook.

But what we observed contradicts that promise. (For the detailed report, click here.)

We created accounts for three imaginary students on the College Board’s website. By monitoring traffic between the site and our students’ browsers, we saw in our initial analysis that when sign up was complete, the College Board sent the username and a unique ID number to Adobe, AdMedia, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Snapchat, and Yahoo.

From the linked report, it looks like The College Board’s web pages include directives for the user’s browser to go to various advertising web pages, with parameters that include the username used to login to The College Board web site.

[doschicos]

Confirms my long held belief that College Board is all about being a money making machine and is an org that sucks.

[taverngirl]

Scum

[NJCity]

There is always the ACT.

[ucbalumnus]

@NJCity

There is always the ACT.

But many students who take advanced level courses may only have AP options involving AP exams from The College Board, if they want advanced placement in college for their effort.

[SuperfrogFan]

Oh College Board sigh how I hate you, but depend on you. You gave me 54 credits, saving me thousands of dollars, but also costing my family $1440 and many hours of my time. You claim to be for the students but execs take home over 1/2 a million dollars each per year. You created a 4D chess I had to master, but made me pay $35 just to play. And then your website crashed EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Did you not think to invest in good servers? Were you more concerned about your marketing and brochures? You also so graciously offered to ~electronically mail~ my scores to a college for $12. I fail to see where the shipping and handling costs are incurred on your end. And that fateful day I ticked yes to student search, you started selling my information. Good thing I used an alternate, because your greed would have left my inbox flooded by NAU and CWRU to this very day otherwise. The most I could do to fight your system was leave unimportant questions about myself blank to reduce my market value, but I still succumbed to your tactics. What was the other choice?
When will the bullet hit me in the back of the head, when will I fall in love with Big Brother College Board?

[Groundwork2022]

I suspected this was happening, just judging from the mail DD gets from colleges she never has, nor ever will, consider.

[ucbalumnus]

Also, the CSS Profile that some colleges require for financial aid also comes from The College Board.

[MaineLonghorn]

Wow, I’m surprised someone hasn’t filed a class action lawsuit.