Carnegie Mellon Alumni: Privacy Policy

The Carnegie Mellon University Online Community is provided by the Alumni Association and the university and is designed to facilitate communication among alumni for personal or university-related purposes.

The university and the Alumni Association have not, do not and will never sell alumni information to anyone. All alumni information is strictly guarded for use by individual alumni and the Alumni Association for personal and university-related purposes only. These include:

Each school or group may have access to the contact information on their members for purposes related to university business and to facilitate communication between the university and the individual(s) and communication among the alumni. Copies of all mailings or emailings to groups of alumni must be sent to the associate vice president for alumni relations.
Individual alumni seeking contact information on other alumni will be given information on no more than 5 people at one time.
Contact information will never be shared with a non-affiliated person for any reason, unless they have the prior approval of the associate vice president for alumni relations.
Access to information for whole groups or categories of people (access to lists of more than 5 people) will be granted only to university staff charged with working with those groups, or to the official volunteer leader of that group (e.g. president of a regional chapter can get contact information for all members in that region; president of the kiltie band can get information on all alumni of the kiltie band; advancement staff of the Heinz School can get information on all alumni of Heinz, etc.) subject to the following restrictions:
1. No information may be shared with any third party or outside vendor by any individual or group that has access to this data in the absence of the explicit written approval of the vice president for advancement.
2. The use of the university contact information by any individual or group to promote products or services of outside or third party vendors to Carnegie Mellon alumni must be approved in writing by the vice president for advancement before any such use can be promised or given.
The process by which approval to use or share the contact information contained in the database will be granted is as follows:
1. If the sharing of data is to be governed by a contract, that contract must be reviewed by the university's General Counsel's office, and signed by an officer of the university.
2. Prior to submitting a contract for review, a written request describing the purpose of the relationship, the mailing or emailing, and including a sample of what is to be sent or a description of the service to be offered must be submitted to the associate vice president for alumni relations for review.
3. The associate vice president for alumni relations will make a recommendation to the vice president for advancement that the request be approved or disapproved.
4. Written confirmation of the approval or disapproval will be sent to the requesting group or individual from the vice president for advancement with a copy to the associate vice president for alumni relations.

The Alumni Association has taken all reasonable precautions to secure the personal information available through the Online community. The Carnegie Mellon University Online Community is password protected to allow access by registered university staff and alumni only. Although this precaution should effectively protect any personal information available through the Carnegie Mellon University Online Community from abuse or outside interference, a certain degree of privacy risk is faced any time information is shared over the Internet. Therefore, through the Online Directory feature of the Carnegie Mellon University Online Community, you have the ability to hide your information from being viewed by other community members.