Collection of Information

Why Is Personal Information Collected?

It is essential and necessary for Florida International University (FIU) to collect, process, use, and/or maintain the personal data of the Institute’s students, faculty, administrative, alumni, donors, and others to achieve its mission and support student with achieving their educational goals.

Whose Information Is Collected?

The Institution collects information about:

• Students (prospective, current and past)
• Faculty and Staff (current, past and visiting faculty and staff)
• Alumni (any student who has earned a degree from FIU)
• Friends (donors, supporters, volunteers and partners of FIU)

The University does not knowingly collect online contact information from children under 13 years of age without prior parental consent or parental notification, which will include an opportunity for the parent to prevent use of the information and/or participation in the activity.

What Information Is Collected?

FIU collects:

• Contact information – home and business addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and social media contact information
• Demographic information – names, titles, gender, birth and death dates, and ethnicity
• Student information obtained from campus records – degrees, majors, organization involvement, activities, awards, and sports involvement
• Employment information – company names, job titles, and industry information
• Family information – spouse’s name, children’s names and birth dates, and familial relationships
• Alumni information – activity interest and participation, event attendance, volunteer interests, organization affiliations, committee participation, awards and honors, attitudes and preferences
• Donor information – giving information regarding any donation which is made or for which someone receives credit
• Analytical information – aggregated transactional information related to web visitor activity and email marketing actions

How Is Information Collected?

Information is collected through a variety of sources, including:

• Self-provided information online or via phone
• Event or activity registrations
• Student records
• U.S. Postal records
• Surveys and focus groups
• Other information service bureaus

Information Collected Automatically (Examples)

We use pixel tags and cookies in our marketing emails so that we can track your interaction with those messages, such as when you open the email or click a URL link that’s embedded within them. When recipients click on one of those URLs, they pass through a separate web server before arriving at the destination page on a University website.

Mobile communication

When you download or use our mobile-device applications, or access one of our mobile-optimized websites, we may receive information about your mobile device, including a unique identifier for your device.

Cookies and Similar Technologies

We may collect information about your use of the websites through cookies and similar technology. A “cookie” is a unique numeric code that we transfer to your computer so that we can keep track of your interests and/or preferences and recognize you as a return visitor to the websites. For example, we may use these technologies to collect information about the ways visitors use our websites, to support the features and functionality of our websites, and to personalize your experience when you use our websites. FIU may also use web beacons or other technologies in conjunction with cookies to gather information about your visit to our websites. Web beacons may be embedded through our website or electronic communications and can allow servers to collect information related to your visit. Web beacons are primarily use to provide content and advertisements that are more relevant to you.

Colleagues, Friends and Family

FIU may also collect information about your colleagues, friends and family through your interactions on our services. This can happen when referring them to our services or using them as a reference i.e.

Social Media Applications/Networking Websites

Our websites include social media features, such as the Facebook Like button and other widgets that run on our site. These features may collect your IP address and which page you are visiting on our site and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features and widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our site. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the organization providing it.

Information You Give FIU

In addition to information collected automatically, we collect information you share with us while using University services. In order to provide you certain services, i.e. we ask for and collect the following personal information about you:

• Account information (like an FIU Panther ID, username and password) that provides access to multiple University systems.
• Social Security number, first name, last name, permanent address, email address, and date of birth.
• When you submit an online appointment request, the University may use any information provided by you.
• Payment information provided in order to pay any outstanding bills to the University, or to pay for certain services.
• Communications with FIU and others.
• Other information you choose to provide us when you fill out a form, fill out an application, ask a question, conduct a search, respond to surveys, update or add information to your my.fiu.edu account, participate in promotions, or use other features of the University.

Information Collected from Other Sources

FIU may also collect information about you from other sources to help us correct or supplement our records, improve the quality or personalization of our service to you, and prevent or detect fraud. We work closely with third parties (for example, business partners, sub-contractors, advertising networks, analytics providers, search information providers, lender and fraud protection services) and may receive information about you from them.

E-commerce

Several sites within FIU enable you to pay for products or services online with a credit card. Unless otherwise noted, these transactions are encrypted. It is university policy that confidential information you enter in the transaction is used only for the purposes described in that transaction, unless an additional use is specifically stated on that site.

Co-branding

Some University websites or services may be co-branded and offered in conjunction with another company. If you use such websites or services, both FIU and the other company may receive the Personal Information that’s collected via that co-branded website or service.

Flash LSOs

We use Local Storage Objects (LSOs) such as HTML5 and Flash to store content information and preferences. We partner with third parties to provide certain features on our site or to display advertising based upon your browsing activity. Various browsers may offer their own management tools for removing HTML5 LSOs.

Log Files

Log files record website activity on our services and enable us to gather statistics about our users’ browsing habits. These entries help FIU determine (among other things) how many and how often users have accessed or used our services, which pages they’ve visited, and other similar data.

Credit Card Information

Credit card information may be used to check the financial qualifications or collect payment from customers regarding orders of products and services.

Industry Benchmarking

For industry benchmarking and analysis consistent with our legitimate business purpose.

Employment Applications

In connection with a job application or inquiry, you may provide us with data about yourself, including your educational background or resume and other information, including your ethnicity where required or permitted by law. We may use this information throughout FIU, its subsidiaries and affiliates, and its joint ventures for the purpose of employment consideration.

Promotional Messaging or Advertising

FIU uses your contact information to recommend products and services that might be of interest to you, to send you marketing and advertising messages such as newsletters, announcements, or special offers or to notify you about our upcoming events.

How is Information Stored and Secured?

FIU uses administrative technical and physical security measures to protect personal information, including destroying information when it is no longer needed. Staff with access to sensitive information are bound to a confidentiality agreement, have passed a criminal background check, and are required to undergo periodic reviews of information security training.

Use of third-party services

We may share your information with third-party service providers for the purposes of communicating with you regarding our programs and services, or to facilitate improvement of our services, our websites, and our marketing efforts or to help us provide services to our FIU community (e.g. software/information technology providers).

Some pages within the website may contain content that is provided by external third parties (graphic, logo or script). When you visit one of our pages that contain this third-party content, information such as IP address, date, browser and requested page may be transmitted to that third party. Some pages may contain links to external third parties in order to provide services or products to you.  FIU is not responsible for the privacy practices of these external third parties. While we request these third parties to protect your information, we do not make any representations about the practices and policies of these third parties. These third parties are not subject to FIU Privacy Notice.

International Privacy

If you access our websites or use our services from outside the United States or are a citizen of another country, be advised that you are sending information, which may include personally identifiable data, to our servers in the United States. The information you provide may then be transferred within the United States or back out of the United States to other countries or jurisdictions outside of your country of residence (or the country in which you are accessing our websites and/or services.) These countries may not have data protection and privacy laws as protective as those in your country of residence or the country/jurisdiction you are located when accessing or using our websites and/or services. Our collection, storage and use of that data will be governed by this FIU’s privacy practices.

General Data Protection Rregulation (GDPR)

The purpose of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is to harmonize data privacy laws across Europe, to protect and empower all EU data subjects data privacy, and to reshape the way organizations across the region approach data privacy.

Florida International University is committed to protecting all personal data it collects, transmits, stores or processes.

In response to GDPR, FIU has formed a GDPR working group which includes representatives from the Office of the General Counsel, the Office of University Compliance and Integrity, and the Division of Information Technology.  This group is charged with addressing the requirements of GDPR, which includes identifying data used by FIU and creating standards on how to handle and protect that data.

If you have any questions, concerns, requests or complaints related to GDPR, please contact the GDPR compliance team at GDPR@fiu.edu