The College Board, known for administering SAT and AP exams, has been fined $750,000 by the New York Attorney General for unlawfully selling the personal information of 237,000 students to colleges and scholarship programs in 2019. The settlement also includes a ban on monetizing student data obtained through contracts with New York schools.
Attorney General Letitia James criticized the College Board’s practices, emphasizing that students taking college entrance exams should not worry about their personal information being commercialized. The fine covers profits from the data sale, penalties, and costs, reflecting the revenue from thousands of SAT and AP exams.
The agreement further restricts the College Board from asking students to opt into data-sharing programs during exams. This action follows an investigation revealing that the College Board had been licensing student data to over a thousand institutions for significant revenue, a practice now curtailed to protect student privacy in New York.
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