Elon Musk’s DOGE may have violated the privacy rights of millions of people’s student loans. TikTokers say the breach is reason enough to get those pesky federal loans forgiven.
Videos are popping up all over TikTok and Instagram of people urging student loan borrowers to file formal complaints after Elon Musk gained access to sensitive student loan data.
They claim this will trigger a process to get your student loans forgiven, even if you don’t currently qualify for a forgiveness program.
It sounds like a dream come true for many borrowers who are financially weighed down by the debt and have been on a years-long “will they/won’t they” whirlwind regarding the expansion of student loan forgiveness.
But experts say that’s not quite how it works.
What exactly did Elon Musk do?
President Donald Trump’s new right-hand man, billionaire Elon Musk, is heading up a special commission called the Department of Government Efficiency, which so aptly abbreviates to DOGE (yes, like that meme cryptocurrency).
Despite having a .gov website, the information on the official Department of Government Efficiency site is essentially an X (aka Twitter) feed in dark mode.
Back to Musk. He and his team appear to have had access to sensitive federal student loan data, like students’ social security numbers, marital status, income, and tax information.
The UCSA says Musk’s DOGE violated FERPA
The University of California Student Association is suing Musk over the access.
They claim that Musk and his department violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (better known as FERPA), which limits how the federal government collects and shares people’s information among agencies, Politico reported.
So far, they’ve blocked him from continuing to have access, but only for a few days—until Feb. 17, to be exact.
A group of 16 Democratic Senators also sent an open letter probing the Trump administration about Musk’s access.
Student loan forgiveness rumor
Several creators have gone viral—with Paris Lorren’s (@parislorren) video earning 7.4 million views and Laverne’s (@scholarshipcollegemama) sitting at 2.4 million—for putting people on to potentially life-changing debt relief.
As of Aug. 2024, the average federal borrower had a $37,853 debt. That’s money that could be spent on an emergency fund, a downpayment on a car, or buying a house.
@parislorren Use credit karma to dispute and the federal student aid site. They both walk you through it❤️ Mass numbers matter in times like this! #studentloanforgiveness #3violations #privacymatters #greenscreen ♬ original sound – Paris Lorren
“When Elon decided to enter into the chat, him being a third-party vendor basically meant that he violated the FERPA policy,” Lorren said. “… Because they gave him access to that information, and it’s supposed to be private, you can legally take charge.”
She said you can sue, but in the meantime, she suggested sending your loan provider and the credit bureaus a message and calling them to dispute the loan. She even offered up the script she wrote for herself.
Based on her profile, it does not appear that Lorren is a loan expert or lawyer.
“Given the severity of this breach and the resulting compromise of my personal financial information, I request that you immediately cancel and discharge my student loan debt in full,” she wrote.
Can I really get my student loans forgiven?
Sorry to break it to you, but no.
Even if Musk and DOGE did violate FERPA, “there’s no scenario outlined in the federal law to give student loan borrowers relief even if there was a violation,” Forbes reported.
Individual students aren’t even able to sue under FERPA. You can file a complaint that’ll be investigated by the Department of Education, but who knows how much longer that department will be around.
The Daily Dot reached out to Lorren for comment via email and TikTok direct message and to The Department of Education via email.
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