alt Hacker NewsWow. A lot of K-12 students probably don't even know their own SSN off the top of their head, much less understand the impact of having it stored in this way. I can't fathom why it would be necessary for the SSN to be tracked by the school. At most, the school district as a whole might want a record so they could make sure kids are getting schooled but putting that into Canvas doesn't make any sense to me.
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Mezzie • yesterday at 7:16 PM
Oh, it's insane and I recoiled when she mentioned that.
But it is 100% happening.
People do amazingly stupid things with systems, especially when they don't have enough people with the expertise to set them up properly, so they just throw things in there without stopping to think about whether or not it's a good idea.
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Agreed, seems wild to me that anyone in 2026 is using SSN as an identifier in a system that's not doing some kind of tax reporting. It's kryptonite for any other purpose.