StudentMail Data and Intellectual Property Protection

QA428 Student Email Data and Intellectual Property Protection

In order to provide the Student Email service, the following data on all students and staff at University of Galway is passed to the approved supplier, Microsoft:

• Firstname
• Surname
• Display name (i.e. Surname, Firstname)
• ID number
• Email address

The Student Email service and associated data is run and stored on Irish Servers in Dublin – under Irish law.

The right to account creation belongs to University of Galway. The data is owned by the individual user. University of Galway will reply to legal requests from relevant authorities; Microsoft will share information in life-threatening situations. 

Microsoft’s privacy policy states that the company is compliant with the Safe Harbor framework. The U.S. safe harbor framework was designed to address the disparities between European and US privacy laws and to establish a mechanism through which U.S. companies doing business in Europe could not only meet the requirements of the European Directive on Data Protection but also be accountable for this compliance.

The European Data Directive on Data Protection makes specific provisions for companies that consider transferring personal data outside of the EU.  

TRUSTe Certification
Microsoft is a member of the TRUSTarc Privacy Programme. TRUSTarc is an independent, non-profit organisation whose mission is to build trust and confidence in the Internet by promoting the use of fair information practices. The TRUSTe programme covers only information that is collected through Microsoft's web sites, and does not cover information that may be collected through software downloaded from such sites. 

University of Galway Data Protection Policy (PDF 35KB)