Overview
At Indiana University (IU), we are committed to protecting the privacy and confidentiality of personal information entrusted to us. This Privacy Policy statement outlines how we collect, use, and safeguard personal information obtained through our website, online services, and other interactions with individuals. By accessing and using IU's services, you acknowledge and consent to the practices described in this policy.
Scope
The IU Privacy Statement is generally applicable to activities conducted by IU that involve collection and processing of personal information. It is meant to provide you with a broad overview of these activities and our approach to protecting privacy.
Many of the IU websites and web applications are hosted on IU Sitehosting, a shared web-hosting environment provided by IU’s University Information Technology Services. For more information about privacy practices related to IU Sitehosting, read the IU Sitehosting Privacy Notice Supplement.
All IU web sites, applications, and services owners are required to maintain a specific privacy notice in compliance with Policy ISPP-24 Website, Web Application, and Web Services Privacy Notices. You will find additional information in specific privacy notices provided by the schools, departments, units, centers, and groups that you interact with at IU.
What is covered?
This statement covers anything digitally offered by Indiana University. Examples services include:
- Websites (iu.edu)
- Web applications
- Web forms, surveys
- Virtual assistants, chatbots
- Mobile apps
- Learning technologies (Canvas and integrated tools)
What is not covered?
Third party web services. If you leave the university websites by clicking a link to another company or social media site, those companies have their own privacy and cookie statements, and the information you provide to them follows their rules and not ours.We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party websites you visit.
Categories of Personal Information We Collect and Use
We define personal information as any information that relates to an identified or identifiable individual. IU collects data from you through our interactions with you and the services that we provide for a variety of purposes described in our data policies and individual privacy notices provided on our websites. We use this data to operate effectively and provide you services that align with the university’s academic and research mission.
In general, we collect and use the following categories of information at an institutional level:
- Prospective students: personal and family information related to the application and financial aid process, including supporting documentation, identification and contact information; including information data related to ethnic origin, if the prospective student wants to disclose such data.
- Students: the information submitted as prospective students, information related to their academic record, their academic performance, video images on campus.
- Faculty and staff: identification, contact information, biographic information, information related to the hiring process, compensation, benefits, family members, information related to performance at work.
- Visiting scholars and exchange students: identification, contact information, biographic information, possibly data related to health.
- Participants of our research projects: as needed, identification and contact information, together with all information that is produced and observed in relation to the participant as part of the research project.
- Alumni: identification and contact information, donor information.
- Website visitors: the internet domain from which a visitor accesses the website, the IP address assigned to the visitor’s computer, the type of browser the visitor is using, the date and time of visit.
- Patients of IU Healthcare Components: identification and contact information, data related to health and billing.
Examples of the institutional information IU collects, broken down by data domain, can be found in the Data Classification Matrix.
When you use your IU login (username and passphrase), we collect your personal information and how you use our services. We also collect your device information to determine things like:
- The type of device (computer or laptop, tablet, mobile)
- Technical information such as IP address, device ID, Apple ID, and device location
How We Use Personal Information
We use your personal information for these types of reasons:
- Administrative purposes such as record keeping, analytics and compliance with legal obligations.
- Deliver our services and send you information about them.
- Process your requests.
- Personalize our services and tailor them to your preferences. We use cookies for this.
- Track data across devices.
- Conduct surveys or research.
- To respond to cybersecurity incidents.
- Improve our offerings.
- Display relevant advertising from another company’s service.
- Understand the services you use and how you use and share them.
- Recommend services or content that might interest you.
- Learn more about you from other data sources.
- Fundraising or recruiting volunteers.
In general, we use personal information for these services:
- To facilitate admission and provide higher education services for our undergraduate and graduate students and prospective students.
- To manage the employment of our faculty members and staff.
- To support website performance and enhance user experience for visitors of our websites.
- To facilitate the visits to our campus for visiting scholars and students.
- To deliver the course material, facilitate engagement, and track attendance and completion for subscribers of our online courses.
- To facilitate the attendance of persons who register for conferences and other events.
- To keep alumni engaged in our community.
- For the purposes of delivering healthcare to our patients.
- To enable participation of individuals who take part in our research projects.
- To review video images recorded by our video security system to ensure our community members’ physical security and to protect our property.
Automatically Collected Information: Automatically collected information is used for website and system administration, troubleshooting, statistical analysis, research, and to improve our services. This information may be aggregated or anonymized for such purposes.
Cookies
Our websites may use cookies and similar technologies to enhance user experience and gather information about website usage. These technologies help us remember user preferences, customize content, and provide targeted advertisements. By using our websites, you consent to the use of cookies and tracking technologies. If you prefer not to receive cookies, you may configure your browser not to accept them at all, or to notify and require approval before accepting new cookies. Some web pages/sites may not function properly if the cookies are turned off, or you may have to provide the same information each time you visit those pages.
In order to customize the information and services offered to you, we use cookies to:
- Store visitors' preferences.
- Record user-specific information on what pages users access or visit.
- To record past activity at a site in order to provide better service when visitors return to our site.
- Ensure that visitors are not repeatedly sent the same banner ads.
We may share anonymous, aggregate information collected from cookies with contracted organizations to help improve your visit experience or for remarketing purposes.
Who Has Access to Your Information
Indiana University does not sell your information to third parties, and will not share it with third parties for purposes other than supporting the mission of the University.
IU may share your personal information with:
- IU’s employees for legitimate and specific purposes.
- Service providers external to IU to assist in delivering our services and supporting IU’s mission. We use a variety of third-party services to help fulfill the University’s mission. For example, we contract with Canvas, Microsoft 365, Google, Salesforce, Unizin, and many other third-party services that aid in the operation of the University. We strive to work with entities who agree to protect the security and privacy of your personal information the same way we do. We only share the information that the third party needs to complete the task we have contracted them to do. For more detailed information on how we collect and process your personal information, please contact privacy@iu.edu.
To improve your experience on our websites and the web services we provide to you, we share general website data with Google Analytics and Siteimprove. We provide general statistics on site usage to aid in site maintenance and improve the quality of our interactions with you.
For more information on these third party privacy practices, please visit
Your Privacy Choices
You have certain rights and choices regarding your personal information, including the right to access, correct, or delete your information. If you wish to exercise these rights or have any questions or concerns about our privacy practices, please contact us at privacy@iu.edu.
Children's Privacy
Our websites are not intended for children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from individuals under the age of 13 without parental consent. If you believe we have inadvertently collected information from a child under 13, please contact us to request deletion of the information.
Privacy Statement Changes
This privacy statement may be updated from time to time. We will post the date of the last update at the top of this page.
Note: This privacy statement is provided as a general overview of our practices and may be supplemented by additional notices or disclosures where required by law or in specific circumstances.