Heading to College? Job 1: Lock Down your ‘Directory Information’

In-brief: U.S. colleges commonly disclose student “directory information” under FERPA, resulting in thousands to hundreds of thousands of records containing personally identifiable information (names, student IDs, addresses, emails, photos, majors, dates of attendance, etc.) being released to third parties without consent; while institutions provide opt-out instructions, few students use them, creating widespread privacy risk.