Policy
Office/Contact: Debbi Bumpous, VP of Technology
Sources/Links:
NSU Student Privacy Rights Notice https://www.northern.edu/academics/records-registration/student-privacy-notice
SDBOR 7:7 Personally Identifiable Information Policy https://www.sdbor.edu/policy/Documents/7-7.pdf
SDBOR 3:5 Confidentiality of Student Records https://www.sdbor.edu/policy/documents/3-5.pdf
SDBOR 3:22 Public Access to Student Directory Information https://www.sdbor.edu/policy/documents/3-22.pdf
SD Public Records Law SDCL 1-27 https://sdlegislature.gov/Statutes/Codified_Laws/2031624
NORTHERN STATE UNIVERSITY
Policies and Guidelines
SUBJECT: NSU Website Privacy Policy
NUMBER: 7:15
Purpose
Northern State University’s (NSU) Privacy Policy is intended to inform users of our data collection practices.
Definitions
COOKIE - a small piece of data that is stored by your web browser on your computer
Scope
Northern State University supports the privacy of information submitted by faculty, staff, students, and visitors to our official university website (northern.edu), portal, and mobile applications. This policy is not applicable to websites created and maintained for purposes outside of conducting official university business, such as personal or organizational websites created by individual students or employees using resources within our university domain.
The NSU official website, portal, and mobile applications provide links to external websites as a convenience to the visitor. NSU in no way controls these sites or resources, does not endorse them or the content, and is not responsible for availability, content, or service delivery. Additionally, external sites outside of the northern.edu domain are not bound by NSU’s online privacy policy and may have their own policies.
Northern State University complies with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which states that with several exceptions, schools must have a student’s consent prior to the disclosure of education records. Please visit the NSU Student Privacy Rights Notice for additional information.
Northern State University does not actively share personal information gathered from our Web servers. However, Northern State University is a public institution and some information collected from official websites may be subject to the South Dakota Public Records Law, SDCL § 1-27.
Policy
It is the policy of Northern State University to collect the least amount of personally identifiable information required to fulfill its required duties and responsibilities, to complete a particular transaction or as required by law.
For site administration, NSU collects non-personal information for analysis and statistical purposes of our website navigation. This data may include pages visited on the site, date and time of visit, Internet protocol (IP) addresses, Internet domain and host names, browser version and capabilities, and identifying search terms used within a search engine. This information is used to help diagnose problems, assess what information is of most interest, determine technical design specifications, identify system performance, and other administration functions.
Visitors to the NSU website may choose whether or not to provide personal information via the official NSU website. If visitors choose not to provide this information, certain options, offers or other services may not be accessible.
NSU collects information that can be used to identify visitors as an individual only when the visitor provides this information directly to northern.edu, the portal, or mobile applications such as submitting a form or signing up for an email list. NSU may also collect information through voluntary interaction with social media platforms.
Third party services may be utilized on behalf of NSU to provide specific services through the NSU website. NSU may provide these third parties information, including personal information collected on the Web to help us deliver programs, products, information and services. These third-party services have been investigated by the university to ensure their protection of personal information on our behalf.
NSU uses Google Analytics, including Demographics and Interest Reporting, to gather information about the device a visitor uses to access web pages and how the visitor used the website, such as IP address, geographical location, length of visit and pages viewed. Google offers an opt-out browser to provide visitors the ability to prevent Google Analytics from using their data.
Certain parts of the university website utilize session or persistent cookies to help improve the overall experience for you, to obtain non-personal browsing patterns on our site, and so NSU can learn more about how visitors arrived at the site. A cookie is a small piece of data that is stored by your web browser on your computer. Cookies on the NSU website only collect information about your web browser’s visit to our site and do not collect personal information about you. NSU may also use cookies to target advertising to visitors when they're on other websites, social media platforms and/or web-based applications. Visitors may choose to opt out from northern.edu cookies. You may decline to accept cookies sent by the website by changing your browser settings to reject cookies.
Responsible Administrator
Source History:
Approval Date: 10/05/2015
Approved By: Senior Cabinet
Review Date: 6/21/2016 – No changes
Review Date: 6/24/2020 – No changes
Review Date: 8/5/2021 – Update template, rename from Privacy Policy to Website Privacy Policy.
Review Date: 2023
Review Date: 5/9/2024 – Revised to include portal and mobile applications