Information on Data Protection for Syntea
Syntea is your 24/7 learning support. You can use Syntea, for example, to answer question while you study or to assess gaps in your knowledge. Your usage history is saved so that you can access it for a year. Other students cannot see which questions you ask and have no insight into your usage history. In order to improve Syntea’s ability to assist all students, your questions are made available to other users without personal reference, i.e. after deletion of your name and other identifying information with the corresponding answers. The questions and answers are checked by a teacher beforehand to ensure that they are correct. Neither the other students nor the teachers can see who asked the question. Likewise, when receiving answers to your questions, you can-not see who contributed to the selected questions and answers. This increases the knowledge base of Syntea and improves the services ability to assist in situations where many students need support.
If you want to benefit from Syntea’s assistance, please give your consent to data processing, the details of which are described below. You can revoke your consent at any time.
1. Controllers and Data Protection Officer
Syntea is provided by IU Group N.V., Square Ambiorix 10, BE-1000 Bruxelles in joint responsibility with IU Inter-nationale Hochschule GmbH, Juri-Gagarin-Ring 152, 99084 Erfurt, which is responsible for the operation of the university, and IU IT Services GmbH, Ridlerstr. 57, c/o IU Group NV, 80339 München (all aforementioned com-panies are hereinafter collectively referred to as "IU"), which provides the operational IT infrastructure includ-ing hardware and software, telecommunications and electronic communications. We will be happy to provide you with excerpts from the joint responsibility agreement. Please contact datenschutz@iu.org.
The aforementioned companies have appointed Dr. Annette Demmel, SPB DPO Services GmbH, An der Buche 4, 13465 Berlin, annette.demmel@spb-dpo-services.com as their data protection officer.
You can contact the IU either in writing or by email at datenschutz@iu.org.
2. Categories of data and purpose of processing
In order to use Syntea, you must consent to the processing of your data. Your consent relates to your personal-ized usage history ("My Area") as well as the removal of your personal data from your questions and usage to make it available for others to use ("Pool"). Syntea places a cookie; please see here for further information.
2.1 My Area
In order to provide you with personalized use so that you can use, save and retrieve study aids tailored to you, as well as save questions and answers in your area, we process your name, email address, de-tails of the courses in which you are enrolled, your study location and your device ID (browser information) (hereinafter collectively "User Data"). This information is shared with Syntea by the website where it appears and stored to make our services more usable for you. In addition, we process the following data that is generat-ed during your use of Syntea: Your text-based interactions with Syntea, questions you formulate, commands issued to Syntea, non-functional dialogue, a selection of answers based on your questions, the results of the answer selection, partially completed assessment answers, the time of interactions, links to external sources, course books, user settings, display settings, sound settings (hereinafter collectively "Usage Data").
2.2 Pool
In order to prepare questions for the corresponding courses in the best possible way, your course affiliation and your usage history are analyzed and the findings are used to improve the services we offer. For this purpose, your user data will be deleted and replaced by a user code. Neither other students nor teachers can see which questions you have asked or how you have used Syntea. The user code is only visible to the employees who are responsible for the operation of Syntea. For Syntea we use software that tries to predict which question will be asked next by evaluating previous questions and knowledge levels and makes these findings available to all users, e.g. in the form of selected quiz questions. The knowledge base and accuracy of success of Syntea is increased enormously in this way, because all students benefit from the Syntea usage of other students.
3. Legal basis
The legal basis for data processing is your consent pursuant to Art. 6 par. 1 a) General Data Protection Regula-tion ("GDPR"). You can revoke your consent at any time with effect for the future by sending us a corresponding message, e.g. by email to datenschutz@iu.org.
4. Recipients and storage period
Only you and selected employees of the IU, who are responsible for the operation of Syntea, have access to your user data and usage data in "My Area". As far as teachers review questions and answers for their professional correctness and appropriateness, they do not receive any personal data that identifies you as a person. All Syntea users have access to the questions and answers in the pool. The user code, which with additional infor-mation from other sources could enable an identification of your person, is only accessible to employees of the IU who are responsible for the operation of Syntea.
In addition, the IU employs internal and external IT staff to maintain the IT systems, who may have access to your personal data in the course of their work. Syntea is hosted on servers operated by Amazon Web Services EMEA Sàrl, Avenue John F. Kennedy 38, 1855 Luxembourg, Luxemburg ("AWS") in the EU. In the event that, ex-ceptionally, a transfer of personal data outside the EU, e.g. to the USA, must take place, IU has agreed with AWS that the EU standard contractual clauses apply, which you can access here. Please note that countries outside the EU may have a lower level of data protection compared to the EU, that disproportionate access by govern-ment authorities cannot always be ruled out, and that there may be no effective legal remedies available against this.
We store personal data for one year and then delete it.
5. Your rights
You can contact IU in writing or per email at datenschutz@iu.org in order to exercise the following rights:
- Access your data in order to check and verify this data;
- Obtain a copy of your personal data;
- Rectification, erasure or restriction of processing, which also includes the right to complete incomplete or incorrect data by providing a supplementary statement;
- Right to object to the processing;
please note that pursuant to Art. 21 GDPR you have the right to object to the processing of personal data processed by us on the basis of legitimate interests pursuant to Art. 6 (1) (f) DSGVO; you have a right to object to processing insofar as this is done on grounds relating to your particular situation; insofar as the objection is directed against the processing of personal data for the purpose of direct marketing, you have a general right to object without the requirement to specify a particular situation,
You can receive your provided personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and transmit this data to another controller, provided that you have given your consent to the processing or the processing is based on a contract;
If you have given us your consent to process your personal data, you can withdraw this consent at any time with effect for the future.
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority with regard to the processing of your personal data. To exercise this right, you can contact the authority responsible for your place of residence or for the location of the IU in Thuringia:
Der Thüringer Landesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz, Häßlerstraße 8, 99096 Erfurt
6. Automated decision making and profiling
Your personal data will not be used for automated decision making or profiling.
7. Why is your personal data collected?
You are free to use Syntea and to give your consent for this. The use of Syntea is not possible without the transfer of personal data.