Privacy,
made clear.

Who can register

• Current EU-HEM students and EU-HEM alumni: they can have a Student Directory profile.
• Students from another programme who attend courses shared with EU-HEM, and faculty, staff and programme partners: they can register, but they are never added to the Student Directory. Their information stays private with the Student Hub team.

Which group you belong to decides whether you can appear in the Directory. Our server decides this from your answer, not your browser.

What the form asks for

• Everyone: how you are connected to EU-HEM, your full name and an email address. An institutional or university email is preferred, but any address is accepted (alumni may no longer have one).
• Current students and alumni, required: your EU-HEM cohort, the country you represent, your previous academic field and your EU-HEM track or specialisation. You may answer that you have not chosen a track yet, or that you prefer not to share it.
• Current students and alumni, optional: a profile photo, an additional country you also identify with, your highest degree and university before EU-HEM, a short bio and LinkedIn.
• Current students and alumni, optional "Mobility experience": your citizenship group and your own study-visa experience for the first EU-HEM semester in Italy (see below).
• Students from another programme: your home institution, home programme and the shared course(s) you attend; LinkedIn is optional.
• Faculty, staff and partners: your institution or organisation and your role; the courses or areas you are involved with and LinkedIn are optional.
• Everyone, optional: which parts of the Student Hub you would like to use or see improved, and a suggestion. We use this only to decide what to build next.
• Not collected: phone numbers, Instagram, and the longer list of interests that the first version of the form asked for.
• Added automatically: the date and time you registered, a random registration number, which version of this privacy information you agreed to, whether you confirmed your email, and whether an administrator has verified your connection to EU-HEM.

A photo is made smaller in your own browser before it is sent. This also removes hidden data stored by phone cameras, such as the location where it was taken. Students from another programme and staff are not asked for a photo.

Optional: citizenship group and study-visa experience

Current students and alumni may answer two optional questions, or skip them:

• Citizenship group: EU / EEA / Swiss citizen, Non-EU / EEA / Swiss citizen, or "Prefer not to say". We do not ask which country, and never for passports or other documents.
• Study-visa experience: whether you needed to apply for a study visa before travelling for your first EU-HEM semester in Italy (Yes, No, Not sure, Not applicable, Prefer not to say). This is your own experience, not a legal assessment; we do not collect visa or passport numbers, refusals, residence status or immigration documents.

Why: to understand students' administrative and mobility experiences, so the Student Hub can offer better practical guidance and, later, help students with similar experiences find each other.

Private by default. Each answer has its own choice: "Keep private" (the default) or "Share with verified EU-HEM students". These answers are never public, even if your profile is Public, and nothing is shared from a profile you chose not to publish. "Prefer not to say" and skipped questions are never shared. Sharing will only work once secure member access exists; until then, these answers stay in the private Sheet and are never sent to the website.

We never work out your citizenship group or visa experience from the country you represent, your name, your university or anything else, and we never assume that a non-EU citizen needed a visa. Your answers do not affect whether you can register, appear in the Directory or use any part of the Student Hub. They are not included in the confirmation email. The same correction, deletion and retention rules as for the rest of your registration apply to them.

Your email address

We use your email to confirm that the registration is really yours. It is never shown publicly. By default it is hidden from everyone. Current students and alumni can choose, under "Advanced privacy settings", to allow it to be shown to verified EU-HEM members only, once a secure login exists.

The confirmation email

After you register, we send one email with a link. The link opens a page with a "Confirm my email" button; only pressing that button confirms that the address is yours (email security systems sometimes open links automatically, so opening the link alone does nothing). The link works for 14 days. If a registration is not confirmed within that time, we delete it, including any photo. If you received such an email but did not register, simply ignore it.

Three separate checks: email, connection to EU-HEM, approval

• Email confirmed only shows that you control that address.
• Connection verified means a person from the Student Hub team has checked your relationship with EU-HEM (for example, that you are really a current student). Confirming your email does not do this.
• Approved is a separate review decision by the team.

None of the three happens automatically because of another, and nothing is published automatically.

Where your information is stored

When registration opens, your answers will be stored in a private Google Sheet, and your photo in a private Google Drive folder. The intended setup uses the Student Hub's own Google account, which also sends the confirmation email, and only the person responsible (see below) can open them. Google stores and processes this data for us as part of its services. The form sends your answers directly to a small Google program (Google Apps Script) that saves them there; the website itself never stores or shows them. This is a student project, not a University of Bologna service.

Google may process information on servers outside the European Union. Its privacy policy explains international processing and transfer protections. The account setup and applicable terms must be reviewed before registration opens; this page does not claim that a live storage setup has already been checked.

Why we are allowed to use your information

We only use your information because you agree to it by submitting the form (your consent, Article 6(1)(a) of the EU General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR). You can withdraw your consent at any time by asking us to delete your registration. This does not affect anything done before you asked.

Who can see a Directory profile: three choices

Current students and alumni choose one; no option is preselected.

• Public (marked "Best for networking" in the form): the details you set to Public may appear on the public Students page, but only once your email is confirmed, your connection to EU-HEM is verified and the profile is approved. Your email is never public.
• EU-HEM students only (marked "More private"): your profile stays private for now. It may later be shown only to verified EU-HEM members, once a secure login exists, and only with the same three checks.
• Do not publish my profile yet: we keep your information, but your individual profile is not displayed anywhere.

"Advanced privacy settings" let you choose for each detail separately (countries, academic background, degree, previous university, track, short bio, photo and LinkedIn): with a Public profile you can still keep any of them for EU-HEM members only, or hidden. An "EU-HEM students only" profile can never have public details. Your email can never be public. A detail you set yourself is never made more visible automatically when you change your profile choice, and the form shows a summary of every setting before you send it.

Who "EU-HEM members" are: verified participating EU-HEM students and alumni across the supported cohorts, whose connection has been checked by the Student Hub team (not by the university). Students from other programmes and staff are not included. If we ever want to widen this group, we will update this page and ask you first.

No real Directory profile is displayed in the current release. Student accounts, secure member access and profile editing are planned features. This prepared registration process does not create an account or make a profile visible. Contact the Hub to ask about your information.

Anonymous statistics

Current students and alumni are asked whether their non-contact information (such as the country they represent, academic background, cohort and EU-HEM track) may be counted in anonymous, combined statistics about the EU-HEM community (for example, the number of countries represented). If you answer No, you are left out. Your name, photo, email and individual profile are never part of these statistics. Any group with fewer than 5 people is not shown separately (it is merged into "Other" or left out), and we also hide numbers that could be worked out by subtraction. This lowers the risk that someone is recognised, but no rule can rule it out completely, so we only publish broad, whole-cohort figures. These safeguards apply to statistics built from registration answers, which have not been published. The separate origins map uses supplied group totals, described under Public content and the cohort map.

Mobility statistics are a separate, optional choice. A box that is not ticked in advance asks whether your citizenship group and study-visa answer may be counted in anonymous, combined mobility statistics. Saying no does not affect your registration or profile. No individual citizenship or visa answer is ever published; small groups are combined or left out, and the figures count only people who agreed and gave one of the actual answers. Registrations made before this question existed are not included unless the person actively agrees later.

Changing or deleting your information

To change or delete your information at any time, contact us or reply to the confirmation email. If you withdraw your consent or ask us to delete your information, we delete your entry in the Sheet and your photo (and empty the Drive bin) without unnecessary delay, and at the latest within 30 days, unless the law requires us to keep a specific record. This includes your citizenship-group and study-visa answers. If your profile was public, we remove it from the Student Hub, but we cannot remove copies that other people or services (for example, screenshots or web caches) may already have made.

How long we keep your information

We keep it only as long as it is needed for the reason you registered:

• Unconfirmed registrations: deleted after 14 days, including any photo.
• Rejected or invalid registrations: deleted within 30 days of the decision, unless you have an open privacy or support request with us.
• Current EU-HEM students: kept while you are enrolled, then for up to 6 months after your cohort's expected graduation (30 September of its final year). Before that, we may invite you to continue as an alumnus; if you say yes, the alumni rule applies, otherwise we delete your profile and photo.
• EU-HEM alumni: kept for at most 24 months after you last confirmed that you want to stay. We ask at least every two years; if you do not confirm within 60 days of our reminder, we delete your profile and photo.
• Students from another programme: deleted 12 months after the end of the course or academic period you attended, unless we have agreed another use with you.
• Faculty, staff and partners: kept while you are involved with EU-HEM and for up to 12 months after your last confirmed involvement.

We also review all registrations once a year and delete those that are no longer needed.

Protection against spam

The form uses a hidden field that only automated programs fill in, and checks that the form was not filled in impossibly fast. These checks use no cookies and no tracking.