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ALWAYSILLINOIS ONLINE COMMUNITY SERVICES
Terms of Use

1.  Introduction
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign provides alumni, students, faculty and staff (“Users”) with blogging, and social networking services (“Online Community Services” or “Services”) only in order to support the educational, research and public service missions of the University of Illinois, which includes enhancing the sense of community that exists among Users. We intend for these Online Community Services to be used towards this end by facilitating communication between Users about education, research, activities and experiences by this group and to assist alumni and students with career advancement opportunities. The University strives to enhance and advance the relationships between itself and its students and alumni. Therefore, these Online Community Services will be used to communicate with alumni and students, promote events and programs, and offer timely, relevant College announcements, news, or services.  Although these Services are provided at no cost to Users, we reserve the right to change these Terms of Use and/or the nature or functionality of the Services at any time and in our sole discretion. Throughout this document the phrase 'The University refers to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The University is providing these Online Community Services for Users through a contract with Affinity Engines, Inc. In addition to the Terms of Use detailed throughout this document, Users will be required to accept the Affinity Engines terms of use presented at the time of registration.

2.  Applicable Laws and Policies
You agree to not use these Online Community Services intentionally or unintentionally to violate any applicable law. The use of the Services provided to Users is subject to all the policies and regulations of the University of Illinois. The Urbana-Champaign campus has compiled a list of major policy documents which can be found at http://www.fs.uiuc.edu/luci. A list of major Information Technology Policies can be found at http://www.cio.uiuc.edu/policies.html.

3. Intended Users
Users of the Online Community Services provided by the University are intended to be the alumni, students, faculty, and staff of the University. Alumni are defined as: graduates of the University; individuals with a special relationship to the University at the discretion of the University; and students that have completed a minimum of one course within the University. Students are defined as individuals currently enrolled in University courses or curriculums. Faculty and Staff of the University may also avail themselves of these services.  Others that wish to use our services may inquire at alwaysillinois@illinois.edu.

Our Online Community Services are intended to support a broad range of communications and professional and appropriate etiquette is required. Minors (those under the age of 18) will require parental consent before being granted access to our Online Community Services. Minors under the age of 13 will not be permitted access to, or accounts on, our Online Community Services.

Anonymous access and posting to our services is also forbidden. All Users must accept that their identity will be associated with any content they provide to the site and may be visible to all Users of the Services.

4.  Your Privacy
The University is committed to protecting the privacy of its Users. Towards this end, information about our Users and the content of material communicated with, or stored within, our Online Community Services will be governed by these Terms of Use, including in particular the University’s Web Privacy Notice which may be viewed at http://www.vpaa.uillinois.edu/policies/web_privacy.asp. You should be aware that the information posted to these Services may be visible to all other Users of these Services. While some controls exist that allow you to restrict visibility, the University makes no warranties about the function of these controls and cannot be held liable should these controls fail.

In the spirit of maintaining a strong, lasting, and dynamic relationship between Users and the University, personal information maintained by the Users of our Services will be used to update alumni and foundation databases which are themselves used to provide all Users of the Services with timely information about changes to these Services as well as notice of alumni, development, campus, College or departmental events, and other programs and offerings of the University. Please contact alwaysillinois@illinois.edu if you wish to opt-out of these offerings. 

You hereby agree and provide your express consent that the University of Illinois may access your account for administrative and other purposes such as password resets, compliance with University policies and other rules governing these Services, including the investigation of security incidents. This right extends to any information stored within the account including e-mail, or other files of any kind or type. Users of these Online Community Services will be notified of account access as described in section 6 of the Campus Policy on Appropriate Use of Computers and Network Systems at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign http://www.fs.uiuc.edu/cam/cam/viii/viii-1.1.html.

5.  External Content
The University does not assume responsibility, nor can be held accountable, for non-University links or the contents or information of those links. This extends to your use of, or losses incurred by your use of, those links or the information they contain.

6.  Administration of the Service and Appropriate Use
The views and opinions expressed by individuals who post questions, answers or other comments to these Online Community Services do not necessarily state or reflect those of the State of Illinois Government or the University of Illinois. Please be aware that we do not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of the information herein. We will, however, make an effort to correct all errors brought to our attention.

We do reserve the right to remove unprofessional or off-topic items as we see fit. Individuals that consistently post on inappropriate issues or in an unprofessional manner will simply have their accounts removed. We hold the right, but have no commitment, to remove content and accounts containing material that we feel is unlawful, offensive, threatening, slanderous, obscene or otherwise objectionable or violates any party's intellectual property or these Terms of Use. We are confident that Users understand and will abide by common courtesy and etiquette.

A few specifics to point out drawn from these Terms of Use including applicable laws and University policies:

• Individuals must identify themselves as themselves and may not impersonate other users or individuals
• Individuals may not share their account with others
• Use of accounts for the creation or delivery of unsolicited commercial email (a.k.a. SPAM) is forbidden
• Use of accounts to store or transmit copyrighted material such as music or video files is forbidden unless permission has been obtained from the copyright owner
• Users may not violate the intellectual property of other Users of these Services or of other individuals in general
• These Services may only be used as defined in these Terms of Use; attempts to 'hack' or otherwise compromise Service systems will be grounds for account termination and may be reported to law enforcement
• Services cannot be used to support cheating
• Services cannot be used for commercial or profit making purposes (See for example Policy on Appropriate Use of Campus and Network Systems at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign at http://www.fs.uiuc.edu/cam/cam/viii/viii-1.1.html.)
• Services cannot be used for political campaign activities (See for example Guidelines Concerning Use of University Resources for Political Campaign Activities at http://www.fs.uiuc.edu/cam/cam/viii/viii-1.3.html.)

Users are encouraged to report violations of these rules or inappropriate behavior to the University by email at alwaysillinois@illinois.edu. Individuals who feel their content was inappropriately removed should use alwaysillinois@illinois.edu to communicate that information. 

7.  Acceptance of Terms
By submitting your unique ID number and logging onto the system, you acknowledge that you have read and accepted these Terms of Use. Since we may change these Terms of Use at any time in our sole discretion, it is your responsibility to review these Terms of Use frequently and we urge you to do so. Individuals, who subsequently decide they wish to end this account, should communicate that information to alwaysillinois@illinois.edu.

Date Issued: August 1, 2007
Issued by: Richard H. Herman, Chancellor
Approved by: Sally Jackson, Chief Information Officer
Last Revised: July 15, 2009