When you create an account on a scholarship website, you may be asked to share academic, financial, and contact information. Those details can help the website personalize your scholarship search and match you with opportunities that fit your background and goals.
But here is the question students are rarely encouraged to ask: What else happens to that information after you click “Submit”?
The same details that help create scholarship matches can also support advertising, lead generation, audience profiling, or other revenue strategies. That process is often called data monetization.
Understanding it does not require a law degree or a deep dive into every line of fine print. You just need to know what to look for.
So, what is data monetization exactly?
Data monetization means creating financial value from information.
Sometimes that process is direct. A company might sell, license, or share data in exchange for money. It can also happen indirectly. A company may use what it knows about its users to improve advertising, generate leads, influence purchases, or make its products more profitable.
The Federal Trade Commission’s investigation into the data broker industry found that brokers collect and combine personal information from numerous sources for uses such as marketing, identity verification, and risk assessment.
Not every use of data is data monetization. Scholarship websites need some information to provide personalized matches. The important questions are why the information is collected, who receives it, how long it is kept, and who ultimately benefits from its use.
How can data monetization appear on a scholarship website?
Different scholarship platforms use different business models. A platform may earn revenue through:
- Data sales or licensing: Information is sold or licensed to another organization.
- Lead generation: Contact information is shared with colleges, lenders, publishers, recruiters, or other businesses interested in reaching students.
- Targeted advertising: Profile or browsing information is used to decide which advertisements a student sees.
- Marketing partnerships: Information is shared with organizations described as partners, affiliates, sponsors, or trusted third parties.
- Internal optimization: User behavior helps a company improve conversions, subscriptions, or other revenue-producing activity.
This is not only a hypothetical situation. A 2017 investigation into scholarship websites found that some platforms used students’ email addresses, phone numbers, and home addresses to generate leads for colleges and commercial partners. It’s been almost 10 years since that research was published, and nothing has changed; data monetization is still actively happening all across the internet.
What information might a scholarship website collect?
The exact information depends on the platform. Common examples include:
- Your name, email address, phone number, and location
- Your school, graduation year, GPA, and academic interests
- Your intended college, major, or career goals
- Your extracurricular activities and community involvement
- Your family income or financial circumstances
- Demographic or identity information used for scholarship eligibility
- Your device type, IP address, browsing activity, and interactions with the site
Some of these details can genuinely improve your scholarship matches. For example, a student interested in nursing may want to see nursing scholarships before seeing opportunities that might not match their background.
The concern is not simply that information is being collected. The concern begins when a platform collects more than it needs, uses the information for an unrelated purpose, keeps it indefinitely, or makes its practices difficult to understand.
Why should students and families care?
Data monetization does not always lead to immediate harm. It can still create tradeoffs that students and families deserve to understand.
- You might receive more marketing emails, texts, calls, or advertisements than expected.
- Your information could be combined with data from other sources to create a more detailed consumer profile.
- Sharing information with more organizations can also make it harder to understand where the information has gone or how to request its deletion.
Student information can be especially personal. Scholarship profiles may include financial circumstances, disability status, immigration background, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, or other details connected to award eligibility.
And the wildest part? There is also not a single federal law that gives every student the same protection on every website.
Instead, federal protections depend on factors such as the student’s age, the organization collecting the information, and where that information came from.
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, commonly known as COPPA, applies to websites and online services directed to children under 13. It can also apply to general-audience services that know they are collecting personal information from a child under 13. But once a student is 13 or older, COPPA does not provide the same automatic protection.
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, protects education records maintained by qualifying schools and educational institutions. But does not automatically protect every detail a student enters on a consumer website.
The plain-English takeaway: A scholarship website is not automatically covered by either law simply because students use it. That can leave teenagers responsible for reading the fine print before sharing their information.
Does “free” always mean a website sells your data?
Not necessarily. This is where the conversation needs more nuance.
A free scholarship website might be funded by donations, grants, sponsorships, premium subscriptions, advertising, lead generation, or a combination of revenue sources. “Free” describes what the student pays. It does not explain how the organization operates.
That is why “if you are not paying, you are the product” is catchy but incomplete. Some free services protect user privacy. Some paid services still collect extensive information.
Instead of assuming, look at the organization’s business model and privacy policy. Our guide to what “free scholarship websites” can cost students explores this question in more detail.
How can you evaluate a scholarship website?
A legitimate scholarship website should make it reasonably easy to understand what it does with your information.
Before creating an account, ask these questions:
1. Can you find the privacy policy?
The policy should be clearly linked and written in understandable language. If it is missing or nearly impossible to find, be cautious.
2. What information is required?
Consider whether each required field is necessary for finding scholarships. A platform may need your GPA or graduation year to determine eligibility. It should not need your bank account number or credit card information just to show you scholarships.
3. Does the platform sell or share information?
Search the privacy policy for terms such as “sell,” “share,” “advertising,” “marketing,” “partners,” “affiliates,” “service providers,” and “third parties.”
Sharing information with a payment processor or hosting provider is different from sharing it with a marketing partner. A trustworthy policy should explain the difference.
4. Can you delete your account and information?
Look for instructions explaining how to access, correct, download, or delete your personal information. The policy should also explain how long inactive account data is retained.
5. Who provides the actual scholarship?
Confirm that the scholarship has an identifiable sponsor, clear eligibility requirements, a real deadline, and official contact information.
The Federal Trade Commission warns students never to pay an application or processing fee for the promise of a scholarship. It also identifies guarantees, pressure tactics, and requests for bank information as common warning signs. You can find more red flags in ScholarTrail’s guide to spotting scholarship scams and protecting your personal information.
One important distinction: A website can pass the scholarship legitimacy test and still fail the privacy test. Real opportunities do not automatically mean responsible data practices.
How ScholarTrail is different
ScholarTrail was created to help students find relevant scholarships without selling their personal information.
We never collect information needed to create accounts, generate scholarship matches, save and track opportunities, manage subscriptions, improve the platform, and protect the service.
Our Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and what choices students have. Under our current policy, ScholarTrail:
- Does not sell user information
- Does not share user information for advertising
- Allows users to delete their accounts and personal information
- Automatically deletes inactive accounts after two years
- Uses service providers and analytics technologies to operate, measure, improve, and market the platform
No responsible organization should ask you to accept a broad privacy promise without details. You can review how ScholarTrail protects student data and read the complete privacy policy before creating an account.
The bottom line
Personalization requires information. Exploitation does not have to be part of the deal.
Before joining a scholarship website, take a few minutes to understand what it collects, why it needs that information, who can receive it, and whether you can delete it later.
Your scholarship search should create opportunities for you. Your personal information should not become an opportunity you never knowingly agreed to provide.
Find scholarships with greater transparency
Create your ScholarTrail profile to receive personalized scholarship matches from a nonprofit platform that does not sell your information.
References
Federal Trade Commission. (2014, May). Data brokers: A call for transparency and accountability. https://www.ftc.gov/reports/data-brokers-call-transparency-accountability-report-federal-trade-commission-may-2014
Federal Trade Commission. (2020, April 9). COPPA guidance for ed tech companies and schools during the coronavirus. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2020/04/coppa-guidance-ed-tech-companies-schools-during-coronavirus
Federal Trade Commission. (n.d.). How to avoid scholarship and financial aid scams. Retrieved September 2, 2026, from https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-avoid-scholarship-and-financial-aid-scams
Krupnick, M. (2017, March 10). How scholarship websites sell students’ information to colleges and publishers. The Hechinger Report. https://hechingerreport.org/scholarship-websites-sell-students-information-colleges-publishers/
U.S. Department of Education. (n.d.). Privacy and education technology. Retrieved September 2, 2026, from https://studentprivacy.ed.gov/privacy-and-education-technology
