Privacy at the University of Sydney

  • Information about how the University deals with personal information (also known as personal data) and the rights of the individual is available on the Privacy at the University page.  
  • Students should refer to the Your Privacy page that, amongst other things, identifies how their personal information stored on student systems such as Canvas and Sydney Student will be used for business and learning analytics purposes
  • Staff should refer to the staff privacy collection statement (pdf, 217KB).  
  • Staff, students and members of the general public who have been granted access to the University’s guest wireless network should also refer to the University’s Acceptable Use of ICT Resources Policy 2019 (pdf, 243KB).
  • For all enquiries about privacy, including the University’s compliance with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), email privacy.enquiries@sydney.edu.au.  

Reporting a breach to a University system

If you are concerned that a University system may have been breached, contact the ICT helpdesk immediately on (02) 9351 2000 (select 2 for ICT) or ict.support@sydney.edu.au.

University Website Privacy Collection Statement

The University of Sydney is committed to protecting your privacy.

We will manage your personal information as required by the Privacy and Personal Information Protection 1998 (NSW), as well as the Privacy Act 1998 (Cth) and international privacy laws where applicable.

Our website privacy statement applies to the personal information we collect from you when you visit or interact with a website we control (‘our websites’).

Summary

This statement describes the types of information we collect use and share through our websites, how to access or amend your information, how to enquire or make a complaint about our handling of your information, and how to opt-out of certain processing of your information by our service providers.  

Read this statement together with our Privacy Policy and Privacy Procedures. 

What is personal information?

Personal information is any information that identifies you.

Information we collect about you

When you visit our websites, we will collect personal information about you in several ways.

We may ask you to provide personal information to us when you submit an enquiry, subscribe to our information service, update your contact details or provide website feedback. 

In some circumstances, we will ask you to use a third party to provide us with information, such as where you register for one of our events. Please see the information below about links to external websites. 

The types of personal information we may ask you to provide include your name, contact details and other information.

University students and staff will be asked to provide their UniKey or Student ID and password to access certain areas of our websites. 

When you use our websites, we collect certain information about you using cookies or other automated means (such as proxy or server logs).

Cookies are small text files that are stored on your computer, mobile device or other web enabled device when you visit the sydney.edu.au website. Cookies allow us to “remember” your actions or preferences over a period of time, or they may contain data related to the function or delivery of our websites. We also use the term “cookie” to describe similar technologies such as pixels or tags.

You can control how websites use cookies by configuring your browser’s privacy settings. Note that if you disable cookies entirely, our websites may not function properly.

We use cookies in the following ways: 

  • To record the areas of the website that you have visited, courses you have viewed and time spent browsing, as well as any action taken on-site. The University of Sydney uses this information to help make the website more user friendly, develop our website design and to continuously improve the quality of the service we provide.

  • Remembering your preferences on our website or where you left off in your last use of the website

  • Keeping track of information you have provided to us – for example, notifying you of an incomplete course application or remembering your favourited courses

  • Understanding your interests so we can provide you with more relevant content on-site through personalisation

  • Understanding your behaviour and interests in order to provide relevant advertising to you on other websites

How we use your information

We will use your personal information for the purpose for which we collected it or a directly related purpose.  

We may ask you to provide personal information when you complete our online forms, such as when you submit an enquiry, application, register for an event or update your contact details. We will use the information you submit to process your request.

We may also use the information you provide on our online forms for business and learning analytics purposes. We do this to help us make better decisions about our operations, services and community engagement. 

We will also use the information you submit on our website forms to provide additional content that may be relevant to you.

If you submit a form related to our Alumni and Advancement activities, we may use the information you provide to update your contact details, inform you about our services, events and achievements, administer your gift or, respond to your bequest inquiry. Our staff and affiliates will have access to this information where reasonably necessary to perform their duties.  

We use the information we collect through cookies to deliver the basic functionality of our websites, as well as to monitor and improve website performance.

We also use information collected via cookies to personalise content on our websites for you, and may also use remarketing cookies, such as through Google and Facebook, to show advertisements when you visit other websites based on your prior visits our websites. 

We use software insights tools to collect anonymous information about user interaction with our webpages and content for the purpose of improving your user experience and our websites. 

Who we share your information with

We will share your personal information with third parties in certain circumstances.  

We engage consultants and contractors to provide assistance with the services. Contracted service providers are bound by the University’s privacy and security requirements. We disclose personal information to our consultants and contractors only to the extent required by them to provide the contracted service.

We engage external service providers to host and support our websites, and as such these service providers will have access to personal information collected through our websites. Our external service providers are bound by the University’s privacy and security requirements.  

We use digital engagement platforms to personalise the content on our websites and to conduct tailored marketing activities.  We enable the operators of these platforms to collect information about your use of our websites for that purpose. 

We use the digital re-marketing platforms to provide website visitors with relevant advertisements through third parties such as Facebook and Google. 

We also use third-party providers to deliver personalised content to you on our websites, including content relevant to the country you are accessing our websites from. 

If you have registered for an event through our websites, we will share your personal information with the event service provider for the purpose of registering and facilitating your attendance.

How we store and secure your information

The University has security measures in place to safeguard personal information from misuse, and unauthorised access, use, modification or disclosure, including those in the University’s Cyber Security Policy 2019 (pdf, 218KB) and the Acceptable Use of ICT Resources Policy 2019 (243KB)

We retain your personal information in accordance with our Recordkeeping Policy 2017.

Links to external websites

Our websites include links to several external websites operated by third parties. This privacy statement does not apply to external websites, and we recommend that you read the privacy information on those websites to understand how the owner or operator will handle your personal information. 

We are not responsible for monitoring and reviewing content of external websites, nor do we endorse, approve or recommend the content, owners or operators of websites and applications available through this website.

How you can access and correct your information

Under NSW privacy laws, you have the right to request access to and correct any personal information concerning you held by the University.

If you live or are located outside Australia, you may have additional rights including: 

  • to restrict or object to our handling of your personal information  

  • to withdraw your consent to our handling of your personal information at any time

  • to object to direct marketing (including any profiling) at any time

  • to the erasure of your personal information, if we no longer have lawful basis to handle it

  • to the portability of your personal information

Information about requesting access to or amending your information can be found on the Accessing University information page. 

How to make a complaint about our handling of your information

You have the right to complain if you think the University has breached your privacy in the way it has handled your personal information. Complaints, also known as applications for internal review, should be made in writing within six months from when you first become aware of the breach.

You can use the privacy complaint form (pdf, 109KB) to make your complaint. 

For further Information about making a complaint, please visit: Privacy at the University - The University of Sydney.