Privacy Policy

UniChat is an academic advising platform operated by the Faculty of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (FDA), National Economics University (NEU), Room 1601, Building A1, 207 Giai Phong Road, Hanoi, Vietnam ("we", "us" or "our"). The Service connects students with their academic advisors through messaging and in-person advising appointments, and gives students and advisors access to academic progress information.

The Service is intended for students and staff of the university.

We collect only the information needed to provide the Service.

a. Account information

• Your name, university email address and profile photo, received from Microsoft (or Google) when you sign in with your university account. We do not receive or store your Microsoft or Google password.
• Your student ID, class, cohort and major, provided by the university.

b. Academic records (provided by the university)

• Course enrolments, grade components, final grades, GPA, CPA, earned credits and conduct scores, from the university learning management system (Moodle) and official transcripts issued by the academic office.
• Class attendance records from the learning management system.
• An academic early-warning level calculated from these records. This level and the reasons for it are visible only to your academic advisors and faculty administrators.

c. Content you provide

• Messages, voice messages, photos and files you send in conversations with advisors.
• Advising appointment requests, the topic and description you enter, cancellations and rescheduling.
• Ratings and feedback you give on advising sessions.
• Meeting evidence such as photos taken during a session or signed meeting minutes.
• Advisors also record session notes and follow-up actions about the sessions they hold with you.

d. Device and technical information

• A push notification token and an app-generated device identifier, used only to deliver notifications to your device.
• Device type, operating system and app version.
• IP address, log data and request times recorded by our servers for security and troubleshooting.
• On the website, cookies and local storage used to keep you signed in and to remember your preferences.

We do not collect your precise location, contacts, health data or financial information. The Service does not use advertising, third-party analytics or tracking tools, and we do not track you across other companies' apps or websites.

• To create and manage your account and authenticate you.
• To let you message your advisors, book, reschedule and cancel advising appointments, and keep a record of your advising history.
• To send notifications about new messages, appointment confirmations, changes and reminders (24 hours and 1 hour before an appointment).
• To show you your own academic results and attendance, and to help your advisors identify students who may need academic support.
• To monitor and improve the quality of the advising service, for example advisors' response times and appointment completion, in line with the faculty's advising regulations.
• To keep the Service secure, prevent misuse and fix problems.
• To comply with university regulations and applicable law.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for advertising or marketing.

We process personal data in accordance with Vietnamese law, including Decree No. 13/2023/ND-CP on Personal Data Protection. We process your data to provide the educational and advising services of the university, to meet our obligations under university regulations and the law, and, for optional features such as push notifications, camera, photos and microphone access, on the basis of your consent, which you can withdraw at any time in your device settings.

We share personal information only as described below:

• Within the university: your academic advisors and faculty administrators can see your profile, academic records, conversations and appointments with them, as needed to advise you. Advisors only see students they are responsible for or who have contacted or booked them.
• Service providers: Microsoft and Google (sign-in), Google Firebase Cloud Messaging and Apple Push Notification service (delivering notifications), and email delivery services. They process data only to provide these functions.
• Legal requirements: when required by law, court order or a competent authority, or to protect the rights, safety and property of students, staff or the university.

The mobile app asks for the following permissions only when you use the related feature. You can decline or turn them off at any time in your device settings; the rest of the app keeps working.

• Camera: to take photos to send in a conversation or to attach as meeting evidence.
• Photos and files: to choose images, videos or documents to send or attach.
• Microphone: to record voice messages.
• Notifications: to alert you about messages and appointments.

• Account information, conversations, appointments and meeting records are kept for as long as your account is active and as long as needed for academic advising during your studies.
• Academic records shown in the Service are copies of records held by the university; the official records are kept by the university according to its record-keeping rules.
• Push notification tokens are deleted when you sign out of the app or when they expire.
• Server logs are kept for a limited period for security purposes.
• When you ask us to delete your account, we delete or anonymise your personal data within 30 days, except where we must keep it to comply with university regulations or the law.

We use reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your information, including encryption in transit (HTTPS/TLS), sign-in through your university Microsoft account, role-based access so that staff can see only the students they are responsible for, and encryption of stored access keys. Servers are operated by the faculty within the university network. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Subject to applicable law, you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you and receive a copy of it.
• Ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete data. Corrections to official academic records are handled by the university academic office.
• Ask us to delete your account and personal data.
• Withdraw your consent for optional permissions and notifications at any time.
• Object to or ask us to restrict certain processing.

Deleting your account: email tqtoan@neu.edu.vn from your university email address with the subject "Delete my UniChat account". We will confirm your request and delete your account and associated personal data within 30 days, except data we are required to keep by university regulations or law.

To exercise any other right, contact us using the details in section 13. We will respond within the time required by law.

The Service is intended for university students and staff and is not directed to children under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.

Your data is stored on servers located in Vietnam. Some service providers listed in section 5 (such as Microsoft, Google and Apple) may process limited data, such as sign-in and notification data, in other countries under their own privacy commitments.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will change the "Last updated" date above and, for significant changes, notify you in the Service. Your continued use of the Service after an update means you accept the revised policy.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how we handle your data, please contact: