this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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I went to college before it was app everything and our student id's were smartcards. Dining plan associated with the smartcard. Just stick it in the reader when you show up and you're good. You could put cash on your card then use it for the vending machines or laundry or any little incidental on campus. If you needed cashed added to your account, your parents could go online and do it, or you could. That was the only online component. The entire system just worked without any fuss or privacy concerns or anything.
Almost without any privacy concerns. When I went to college around the turn of the millennium, I worked at the main food court on campus. We had a card system just like you're describing. When we swiped the student's card to pay for their meal, their student ID would come up on my screen. Their student ID was their SSN. Back then the first three digits of a person's SSN was based on the state they lived in when they got their number assigned. For most people that was when they were a baby or at least very young, and for most people that's the state they did most of their growing up in. I used to have most of the codes memorized, so when I'd swipe someone's card and see that they had an SSN from someplace that wasn't the state where the university was, I'd mention it. "Oh, hey, you're from Ohio? My aunt lives in Ohio."
Yikes! That was a privacy nightmare. We were fortunate that the university assigned a personal ID on enrollment. I think the only place that had access to the social was the front office. Of course some of the students worked at the front office. I hope they were required to sign an NDA.