Third Party Access Granted : Postmortem on Student Privacy
Sharlene Toney
DEF CON 33 (backfill) · Day 1 · Main Stage
In "Third Party Access Granted: Postmortem on Student Privacy," Sharlene Toney dissects the intricate and often opaque flow of student data from educational institutions to commercial data brokers, highlighting significant privacy concerns and the critical lack of student control. The talk exposes how amendments to federal privacy laws, coupled with the non-profit status of key intermediaries, create a vast loophole that allows personally identifiable student information to be collected, aggregated, and resold without explicit consent, ultimately impacting students' financial well-being and future opportunities.
AI review
Toney does real homework here — the NSC pipeline, the FERPA amendment history, and the Equifax partnership are documented with enough specificity to be genuinely useful. The talk earns its DEF CON slot as a policy/case-study hybrid, not as technical research, and judged on that lane it delivers competent, honest work without padding it into something it isn't.