If you’re a college student and want to know who is collecting your personal contact information, there’s no better way to find out than a Freedom of Information Act request.
A review of all FOIA requests from my alma mater, Illinois State University, reveals that individuals and companies can obtain students’ contact information without a student’s consent. This is possible because of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
Per FERPA, universities are able to provide all sorts of contact information about students to whomever requests it. This information is unknowingly provided to the requestor unless the student opts out.
In my assessment of the organizations requesting this information from ISU reveals that the requestors are predominantly commercial entities. While this is perfectly legal, the logs provide insight into the types of organizations requesting the information. In this case, it appears to be realty companies leasing apartments around campus.
Some of these FOIA email/student contact information requests are targeted, meaning they’re looking for particular information about a subset of student demographics, for example a major or students from a certain zip code, but most of the requests are asking for student all emails carte blanche.
In assessing the logs, which can be downloaded in their raw format here, ISU’s logs are not capturing the organization correctly. For example, Megan Fritzen has requested student emails four times since 2012. Only once did ISU capture the organization she was requesting on behalf of – SAMI Realty – and that was stored in the request summary field in her first request. In subsequent requests, either Ms. Fritzen didn’t disclose her organization or ISU failed to document the organization. I believe it’s the latter as other FOIA filers are captured in similar fashion.
John Kraft of the Edgard County Watchdogs requested five FOIA requests, including one for “emails”, and his organization is only captured once in ISU’s FOIA logs.
In some cases though, there are omissions. Megan Roop submitted five FOIA requests – all for emails. A quick internet search found that she too works for SAMI.
It’s not just apartment rental companies: Lexis Nexis is among the requestors getting contact information.
To make this a better experience for those interested in the data, in the file download above, the file CoalescedLog.xslx reflects updates I’ve made to the fields based on these findings. I can’t say it’s 100% correct as I was only interested in FOIA requests pertaining to emails. Some requests only mention “emails.” Since this is vague at best, I tracked these as pertaining to student emails.
To give credit where credit’s due, it does appear ISU is becoming better with time about capturing more data about its requests.
ISU’s opt out language of FERPA is interesting in itself. It reads as follows:
Please consider very carefully the consequences of a decision to withhold directory information. A non-disclosure block will call for Illinois State University not to release any of this “directory information;” thus, any future requests for such information from non-institutional persons or organizations will be refused.
Illinois State University will honor your request to withhold directory information but cannot assume responsibility to contact you for subsequent permission to release this information. Regardless of the effect upon you, Illinois State University assumes no liability as a result of honoring your instructions that such information be withheld.
It makes it sound as though opting out of this is to the students’ detriment. What are these consequences? Under FERPA public universities easily allows corporations to build and expand their databases to send targeted messages. By opting out, you’re opting out of likely being on the receiving end of an advertisement. Why is that so bad?
There’s a saying that when the product is free, you’re the product. State universities are not free, yet the student body’s metadata is free to be commoditized. There’s an irony here that in an age where universities are happy to sell corporations naming rights to buildings and schools, they’re giving away invaluable data to the same companies for free.