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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

> I don't know how they found out? Is that public information?

When I graduated college (UC Berkeley, very large public school in California) I had to go to the registrar to pick up my diploma since I graduated off cycle. In line in front of me was a guy who seemed to know the lady at the window well, and put down a piece of paper and said "got another list to check". The lady went into the back, so I asked the guy what he was doing.

He told me he worked for a background check company and was there about once a month with a list of names to verify graduation dates. He told me a lot of his work comes from government and big companies. He then suggested that if I was going to lie about graduating, make sure it was to a small company that can't afford background checks!

He also told me that almost every month there is at least one person who fails to have the degree they claim to have.

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Dunno how long ago that was, but these days universities tell you that they're prohibited by law to disclose such information. In the US the applicable law is FERPA-- which was passed in 1974-- but there are similar rules in other countries. You might well have been witnessing a violation, it certainly happens.

The general difficulty in checking such things is part of why that form of fraud is so ubiquitous.

FERPA - https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html

>Schools may disclose, without consent, "directory" information such as a student's name, address, telephone number, date and place of birth, honors and awards, and dates of attendance. However, schools must tell parents and eligible students about directory information and allow parents and eligible students a reasonable amount of time to request that the school not disclose directory information about them.

I'm aware as I've argued it with a number of institutions. In my experience most do not and will not, and instead demand that that they receive consent specifically from the "student"... even for parties that were never students there and by the letter of the law ought be afforded no protection.

FERPA doesn’t apply when the person has a signed agreement to allow disclosure. Same way you can request that one college send your grades to another (for grad school apps for example).

Doing a background check is the same thing. It’s authorized by the student.

Have you ever filled out a form for your university to authorize one?

No, the background check authorization includes the form that authorizes the school to disclose your transcript.

I had an employee who lied about a diploma in ~2015. It was pretty bold, he even included a student ID number. Eventually we just called the school's registrar's office and asked if we could verify a diploma. They asked for the name and then told us they had no record of a student by that name. I asked if they could tell us if the student ID number was realistic and was told that it wasn't even close to what their ID numbers looked like.

So it looks like your mileage may vary.

IIRC, providing false information about a diploma in California is a felony.

This is done via parchment.com these days, they send you a nice e-diploma whose signature can be verified in Acrobat Reader or on their site directly.

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