To attend prom or a football game, California students first had to surrender their data

By Adam Echelman, CalMatters

Before they could attend school football games or school plays, high school students across California had to give their personal information over to a ticketing platform, GoFan, which then sold that data to advertisers, state privacy regulators said. The parent company PlayOn, which has contracted with roughly 1,400 California schools, repeatedly violated state privacy law in 2023 and 2024, according to a January disciplinary order filed by the state’s privacy protection agency.