University of Minnesota Online respects the privacy of website visitors to the extent permitted by law. The online privacy statement is intended to inform you of what information is collected by this web site and how the information is used.

Personally Identifiable Information

The University of Minnesota Online website only collects personal information which you knowingly and voluntarily provide to us by, for example, sending emails, completing a form, or responding to surveys. If you provide us with personal information, we will respond to your inquiry or request. We also may contact you to provide information about University of Minnesota Online activities, programs, and special events that may interest you. You will always be provided an opportunity to opt-out of communications.

Our data gathering and dissemination are governed by state and federal laws, including the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act, Minnesota Statues, Chapter 13. Personally identifiable information is not released to external parties without your consent unless required by law.

Non-Personally Identifiable Information

If you visit our website, we automatically gather and store the following information about your visit so that we can manage our website and improve service. This information includes, but is not limited to the following, and is stored and used in aggregate form only:

  • The name of the domain from which you access the Internet
  • The IP address from which you access our website
  • The URL of the web site from which you directly linked to our website
  • The browser and operating system used to access our website
  • The date and time you access our site
  • The pages and documents that you visit
  • The search terms used on our search engines
  • The following demographics data: gender, age, income and education

Cookies

In addition to information collected automatically, we use cookies, which are small pieces of information sent to your browser by a website that you visit. These cookies do not collect personally identifiable information. Cookies are used to track (in aggregate form) usage patterns, traffic trends and customer behavior, as well as to record other information from the website.

University of Minnesota Online employs outside companies (including, but not limited to, Google Ads, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Microsoft Bing, and Microsoft Clarity) to provide marketing services on our behalf. With our approval, these third parties may place cookies during your visit. These third-party companies will only collect non-personally identifiable information about your visit, such as the URLs which lead you to and from our site, pages visited, product(s) purchased, and the amount spent. Any data collected will be used in accordance with our privacy policy, as well as the privacy policy of the vendor.

University of Minnesota Online uses third-party advertising and analytic companies (including, but not limited to, Google Ads, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Microsoft Bing) to serve ads about our organization on websites across the internet. These companies may use cookies to serve you more relevant advertisements and offers across the internet based on the information about your visit to this website.

University of Minnesota Online uses Google Analytics 4 to collect information about your visit to this website in order to provide quantitative analysis about our audience. We do not combine the information collected with any personally identifiable information.

You may set your browser to refuse cookies from any website that you visit. If you would like more information about cookies and the option not to have them used by third-party companies during your visit, please visit Google's My Ad Center or Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) Consumer Opt Out.

GDPR- General Data Protection Regulation

Notice Specific To Persons Within the European Union

If you are in the EU and you interact digitally with the University of Minnesota, then our processing of your personal information may fall under Regulation 2016/679 (the General Data Protection Regulation, or the “GDPR”) and under the legal framework of Directive 2002/58/EC (“ePrivacy” Directive). In these circumstances and as applicable, the University of Minnesota may be the controller of the processing of your personal data. Please see the University of Minnesota GDPR page for more information.

Legal Basis for Processing

When we process your personal information, we will endeavor to have a valid lawful ground for processing in place. We process your personal information relying on different lawful grounds for processing, depending on the context of the processing activity.

Your Rights

The University of Minnesota is committed to facilitating the exercise of the rights granted to you by EU data protection law (the right to access your data, to ask for erasure, correction, restriction, portability of your data or to object to the processing of your data) in a timely manner for personal information that properly falls under the GDPR.

In order to be able to reply to your request for exercise of your rights, and if we are not certain of your identity, we may need to ask you for further identification data to be used only for the purposes of replying to your request. If you have any inquiries or requests, please write to GDPRINFO@umn.edu or mail to Records & Information Management; 360 McNamara Alumni Center; 200 Oak Street SE; Minneapolis, MN 55455.  

In addition to your rights under the GDPR, the University of Minnesota is also subject to the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act, Minnesota Statutes Chapter 13. Information on Public Access to University Information, as well as Information on Rights of Subjects of Government Data can be found in Administrative Policy: Public Access to University Information.

Retention Period

We strive to keep personal data in our records only as long as they are necessary for the purposes they were collected and processed. Retention periods vary and are established considering our legitimate purposes and all applicable legal requirements. More information on the University of Minnesota records management program is available at Administrative Policy: Managing University Records and Information.

Transfers

When you interact with the University of Minnesota, your personal information is transferred to the United States. The United States is not currently among the countries outside the European Union that have obtained an adequate level of protection from the European Commission. To ensure the lawful transfers of personal data from the EU, the University of Minnesota relies on the derogations laid out in Article 49 GDPR. Be advised that we provide safeguards for the information transferred, as required by the GDPR itself and in accordance with this website privacy notice.

Questions and comments about this Privacy Statement can be sent to herol009@umn.edu.