MyUW Policy on Privacy

Commitment to Privacy

MyUW is your personal portal to University of Washington resources on the World Wide Web. Whether you use the Web in your daily work and educational activities, or are just an occasional visitor, we hope that MyUW helps you build a personalized set of pages that makes each trip to the Web a powerful, safe, and enjoyable experience.

To that end, we want you to know that the people who bring you MyUW are committed to respecting your privacy. We make all reasonable efforts to protect your personal information and to not intrude on your email and Web space without your continued permission.

In addition, you need to know that protecting your privacy is also up to you. The UW NetID login opens a world of personal information that you must close when you are finished. When you log in to MyUW using your UW NetID, you automatically have access to other UW NetID protected resources, outside of MyUW. This access continues for 8 hours, enabling you to use these other UW NetID resources, usually without needing to log in again. This convenience comes with a warning: because these resources may contain personal information, it is imperative that you completely close all Web browser windows when you leave your computer.

Key Privacy Points

The following three points may answer your basic questions about your privacy on MyUW. For more detailed information, please refer to the "Caveats and Limitations" section that follows.

1. Information you supply to MyUW is used only to personalize your Web page. We do not share or sell your personal information.
    
2. Your personal information is not disclosed unless such action is necessary to comply with the law, to protect UW property, or to enforce UW policy.
    
3. Any MyUW service for which you register allows you to terminate that service (unregister) at any time.
    
4. To protect your privacy and prevent unauthorized use of your UW NetID, you must completely close all Web browser windows when you finish using MyUW.

Caveats and Limitations

The limits to which we can accomplish our goal of honoring your privacy are spelled out in the sections below.

Information Collected
Where information is stored
Whenever you browse the Web, all sorts of information is gathered about where you have been and what you have looked at. This information can be found on:

• The PC you use (in browser history, cache, cookies, and other files)

• The servers you visit (in log files that collect IP addresses, time information, and names of pages visited)

• Possibly in other computers you might use to access the Web

Use of system log information
The UW computers that serve MyUW keep a minimum set of system logs that allow us to tune and protect the service and to determine general usage patterns. We do not keep the information any longer than reasonably necessary to meet these objectives. The information we collect consists of:

• The name of the domain from which you access the Internet (for example, department.washington.edu or company.com)

• The date and time a UW Web site is visited

• The Internet address (IP number) of the Web site from which you linked

• Selected information (like UW NetID, browser type, and affiliation) in MyUW logs to help when there are problems to be debugged

• Help diagnose problems with our servers

• Administer the MyUW Web site

• Gather broad demographic information about our users in general

Cookies are pieces of information that a Web site transfers to your computer and may be placed on your hard disk for record-keeping purposes. Cookies are used by MyUW to make use of the UW central login procedure.

They are not used to track your usage, nor are they used in any other way at this time.

The only information that MyUW keeps is that reasonably required to personalize your pages. We do not keep track of what pages you visit except to deliver a customized service or to provide a personalized service you have requested (for example, to display new announcements).

UW Home Page is an alternative to MyUW
If you do not wish to have any personalization information on file for MyUW, you are encouraged to use the general UW Home Page at http://www.washington.edu as your portal into the UW Web world.

Personal Information You Choose to Share
Via email and Web forms
When you send us personally-identifying information in an email message or when filling out a Web form, we use this information to respond to your requests. We may forward your email or form to other UW employees who are better able to respond to your questions or comments.

Via other Internet exchanges
Information you share with others through chat sessions, email exchanges, or bulletin board discussions can be collected and used by others. You are responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your passwords and personalization information. Please be careful and responsible whenever you are online.

Legal Restrictions and Exceptions
Restrictions on State employees
State law governs the use of UW Web resources by UW faculty and staff (including student staff). As employees, you need to be aware of the restrictions that apply and to understand that what you do as a state employee has the potential to be open to the State of Washington Public Records Act.

Exceptions for disclosing personalized information
The UW does not disclose your personalized information unless acting under a good faith belief that such action is necessary to:

• Comply with legal process

• Protect UW property

• Enforce UW policy

Individual use information therefore may be kept in the case where there is legitimate cause to suspect that illegal behavior is taking place.

Monitoring network traffic
We also monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information or otherwise cause damage to the MyUW Web service.

Privacy/security policies outside our domain
Once you leave the MyUW pages, we have no control over the privacy and security of information you provide to others.

MyUW Security Measures
We focus on Web site security so that the MyUW service remains available to you and other visitors. For your information, the following measures are in place:

• Your UW NetID and password are used only to verify your identity as a member of the UW community. This verification takes place through a secured system managed by UW's central computing office, UW Technology.

• You have access to your personal information and MyUW profile for some time (currently eight hours) after your last access to the MyUW server, or until you exit your browser. Your password is not stored anywhere on the records of MyUW.

• Your personal information is kept on secured servers that are not available to the public.

• All functions of MyUW that contain sensitive information are encrypted when transferred to your browser.

Contact Information

If you have questions about our privacy policy, please contact us.

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