Website Data Confidentiality Policy

Data gathering and consent to processing the data gathered

In compliance with Spanish Law 15/1999 of December 13 on the Protection of Personal Data, you are informed that any personal data requested in our forms or that may be supplied to us by means of our email addresses will be added to our personal data files, which are owned and controlled by the FUOC. Hence when users provide personal data through filling in any of the forms they are asked to complete and agree to send them in, or when users send us emails containing personal data, they expressly authorise and give their consent to the F UOC for the purpose of processing and including in our files those personal data and any others that may be provided in connection with the users' participation in or use of the various products and services offered in this website, though such authorisation is revocable (with no retroactive effect), and the users also thereby accept the processing terms as set down hereunder.

You are also informed that all the data will be processed with the greatest confidentiality and in accordance with current legislation on the protection of personal data, and that our files are legally registered with the General Registry of the Catalan Data Protection Agency.

The FUOC shall not be held responsible for the data processing carried out by any websites that users may visit via links from our website.

This website is governed by the legal provisions applying exclusively to Spain, and all the website's users, whether from Spain or abroad, are subject to those legal provisions.

The processing: purposes

The data requested are whichever data are suitable, pertinent and strictly necessary for the purpose for which they were collected. They will never be used for any purpose other than the one for which they were granted, and users are never obliged to provide them; however, they are absolutely necessary for rendering the services we offer to our users.

Unless specifically stated otherwise, filling in all the fields in each form is required, and when filling in the forms users are to supply data that are truthful, accurate, complete and up-to-date. Users are solely responsible for any loss or damage, whether direct or indirect, that may be entailed for FUOC or any third party through filling in the forms with false, inaccurate, incomplete or out-of-date data or through filling in the data of third parties instead of their own.

Our website obtains users' personal data by receiving various forms sent in to us, and also through emails sent to us, for the following purposes:

a) Managing the administration of, performing and pursuing all the FUOC's teaching and institutional activity, and making arrangements for users in connection with the various services made available to them (for example in requesting information on degrees and postgraduate courses, or when applying for admission to the UOC, and so on).

b) For arranging subscriptions to UOC Papers, articles, studies, journals, bulletins and websites.

c) In connection with the Job Listings section for working with us and with companies in the UOC Group, as well as invitations to apply for teaching posts.

d) For managing the administration of, performing and disseminating the Virtual Campus services (for example, organising cultural and sports activities, travel, meetings, and so on); in addition to the regulations set down here, those services are also governed by specific regulations that must be adhered to by all members of the community. Users are made aware, and accept, that being a member of the Virtual Campus means that any authorised member of the virtual community can access their published data, from anywhere in the world.

e) In connection with informing or registering FUOC associate or partner companies, for their development.

f) In running the Campus for Peace, for informing or registering partner companies, and for attending to and registering Campus volunteers.

g) For commercial purposes: when users decide to send in their personal data and email address to the FUOC, they thereby expressly authorise the latter to use it for the purpose of occasional communications, expressly including the communications sent by email that the FUOC or other bodies belonging to the teaching sphere of the FUOC arrange for students, alumni, members of the Virtual Campus, associate and partner companies, Campus for Peace volunteers, and any other persons supplying their personal data for any of the purposes explained, as well as people expressing interest, for the purpose of informing them about activities or news, courses, study programmes etc. and announcements of all kinds about services and products connected with the institutional activity pursued.

The FUOC reserves the right to decide on whether or not to add the data on those persons to its files.

Users' rights to access, correct or cancel their data

Users have the right to access the information compiled on them in the FUOC's files, to correct the data if they are incorrect, to cancel them, and to oppose the processing of those data, in accordance with the terms set down in the pertinent Law, by contacting the Head of Data Protection at the Foundation (address: fundació per a la universitat oberta de catalunya - Responsable de Protecció Dades, Rambla del Poblenou, 156, 08018, Barcelona).

To enable us to keep your personal data up-to-date, it is important that you tell us about any change arising, for otherwise we cannot provide assurances on the accuracy of those data.

If you do not expressly cancel your personal data from our files, we will assume that you remain interested in the data being held for as long as they are relevant for the purpose for which they were obtained, and for as long as the FUOC deems appropriate.

Security

In response to the trust placed in us, and bearing in mind the important requirement of protection and confidentiality for the users' data, the FUOC informs you that all the technical and organisational measures needed for safeguarding the security of the data have been taken, as required by current regulations on security measures for files containing personal data.

Disclosure of data

You are informed that your data are treated as confidential and are used solely for internal procedures associated with the purposes explained; thus, those data are neither ceded nor disclosed to any third party unless the users concerned expressly authorise us to do so, in the cases envisaged in the relevant legal provisions.

You expressly authorise us to make your personal data known – unless we are instructed otherwise by you – solely in the following cases:

1. To the companies in the UOC Group – namely, Editorial UOC, SL; Eureca Mèdia, SL; Xarxa Virtual de Consum; GEC, SA; and Ensenyament Obert, SA – for offering services (for publishing, multimedia, the purchasing cooperative, and other study options), particularly in connection with employment opportunities. In all cases, the company receiving your personal data and the purpose of divulging them will be stated. By accepting this clause, you acknowledge being informed of the provisions of Article 27 of the Spanish Law on the Protection of Personal Data (LOPD) concerning notification of the first instance of data being disclosed to a particular third party.

2. Through being members of the Virtual Campus, users consent to their identifying data and image, as well as any other data the users may voluntarily add to their profiles, being made accessible to all the other members of the Campus community, though everyone in it has to comply with that community's regulations.

The acceptance granted by users for having their data processed or disclosed in the manner explained in this section is always revocable, though with no retroactive effect, in accordance with the provisions of articles 6 and 11 of Spain's Organic Law 15/1999 of December 13.

The FUOC makes various recommended options available to users, though in all cases liability remains with the sender of a message; accordingly, the FUOC cannot be held liable for the sending of unsolicited commercial communications. We do not keep the email addresses of addressees under any circumstances. Users are also expressly forbidden to arrange mass dispatches of emails through those options, or to arrange processing for commercial purposes.

The FUOC hereby notifies users that cookies are employed as they surf around the screens and pages of the website. Though the cookies used by the FUOC are stored on the users' hard drive, the cookies cannot read other data stored on those drives or the cookie files created by other service providers. The FUOC uses cookies for the purpose of recognising the users who have registered in order to be able to offer them a better, more personalised service (language preferences etc.). They are also used to obtain completely anonymous data on website access (the date, the hour and minute, frequency data etc.), in order to measure certain website traffic parameters and to compute the number of visits, so that the FUOC can orientate and fine-tune the services it offers more effectively. However, users can prevent cookies being generated through the relevant set-up option in their browser program; if they do, the website will remain operational, though without the advantages of personalisation.

Commercial communications by email

In compliance with article 21 of the Law on Information-Society Services and e-Commerce, which forbids the dispatch of commercial communications by email unless the dispatch has been expressly authorised by the recipients, you are informed that by accepting these terms of use and confidentiality policy you give your express authorisation for dispatches of an informative, commercial, advertising or promotional nature being sent to you at the address you have provided. However, if you do not wish to receive our commercial communications by email, you can request not being sent any more of any particular commercial series by following the instructions included in each email sent out.

Changes to this confidentiality policy

This confidentiality policy was established on 05/06/2007. The FUOC reserves the right to amend its data protection policy in the future at is own discretion or in response to changes in legislation, case law or business practice. In the event of the FUOC making any changes, the new text will be published on this same page, where users can become acquainted with the data protection policy. In all cases, however, relations with users shall be governed by the provisions in place at the very moment in which they access the website, and thus users must read the provisions every time they supply their data through our website.