Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

A few years ago, my son was going through that rite of passage known as the SATs. He signed up to take the standardized test on a webpage, which asked dozens of intimate questions about age, income, parents’ income, grades, high school courses taken, hobbies, interests, etc. All this to take a standardized test. You could bypass these by indicating that you didn’t want to answer, and the website would tell you that your application was “only 10 percent complete.”

Some questions, like Social Security number and name of high school and high school counselor, were mandatory, as was the requirement that you upload a photograph. Knowing a 16-year-old kid had been asked all these questions, I wondered, what is the privacy policy? What will this merchant do with this information?

The website notes that it offer a voluntary (opt-in) program “that allows students to receive information about educational and financial aid opportunities from colleges, universities, scholarship programs, and educational organizations.” If the student opts in, then “the following information is sent … name, postal address, gender, birth date (if provided), school, grade level, ethnic identification (if provided), intended college major (if provided), and email address (if provided).” Ah, what is left unsaid.

First, “scholarship programs” and “educational organizations” include the U.S. Department of Defense, the CIA, the NSA, and other government agencies that maintain scholarship programs or that have educational programs.

By opting in to a college search program, you are opting in to giving your information to the U.S. government. Although there may be some guidelines on how the DoD can use this information, they certainly could, with a grand jury subpoena or other legal process, obtain the database and match it with, for example, names of people who did not register with the Selective Service (a crime). Betcha didn’t know thatwhen you registered for the SATs.

The other problem is that the website claims that only a very limited amount of information–name, address, gender, school, grade level and intended major–are shared with these institutions. If that is truly the case, then why do they ask for information like “parent’s level of education” or “parents’ combined income” or “what language did you learn to speak first” or “what language do you speak best” or grade point average and class rank?

Then there’s self-rating in math, science and writing, advanced placement classes expected, citizenship, religion, disabilities, types and locations of schools of interest, employment history or intention in school, extracurricular activities, sports, clubs, honor societies, and a host of other questions. OK. If they share only name, address, gender and intended major with these institutions, then why are they collecting all of this otherinformation? What do they do with it, and how do they protect it?

Here’s where privacy policies get tricky.